set

Three findings about astronauts’ blood have set off all the alarms. Going to Mars will be more dangerous than expected

by

We do not want to recognize it, we are not willing to accept it, we refuse to see it; but no, we are not made for space. And our persistence, in the context of large, long-duration manned missions, can cost us dearly. The last reminder has been the blood. The blood? Indeed. Three recent findings (accelerated destruction of red blood cells, platelet dysfunction in microgravity and somatic mutations of hematopoietic stem cells) make it clear that we still have a long way to go before we can enter the depths of outer space without putting our lives at risk. A giant elephant shaped like hematological syndrome. Because this is important, it is not a small health problem. None of that: we are talking about a whole hematological syndrome that affects us on numerous physiological fronts. And it makes sense: the blood leaves a lot to be desired. Is too prone to clots and too slow to clot when it is needed. Plus, he’s not very good at putting up with things either. in space more red blood cells are destroyed than are produced and that generates persistent anemia that can take up to a year to recover. This year it took place the first medical evacuation from the ISS and everything suggests that it will not be the last. A very real problem. That’s what the evacuation of Colonel Mike Finckethat space medicine is not a theoretical question. Even more so, taking into account that every time there will be more people up thereorbital health has become a key issue. What’s new? There is no big news, really: what is new is that an overall vision is now beginning to emerge. And that is giving us a clear idea of ​​the problems we face. For example, space increases the risk of thrombosis and bleeding simultaneously: they are two completely opposite things that have no clear pharmacological approach. And then? Simply be cautious. The new era of space exploration is going to expose us to the evils of space like never before. If we are not prepared, the ‘Gelsinger effect‘ may end up setting everything back a couple of decades. Image | Bradley Dunn In Xataka | NASA astronaut remains hospitalized after returning from space on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft

Psychology says that the best time of year to set resolutions is not January 1: it is now in spring

by

It is a classic among many people: reach January 1 and resolve to go to the gym, eat better, learn a language or quit smoking. But in many cases by mid-February this purpose has already been abandoned and waiting for a new year to start the cycle again. We usually blame our lack of willpowerbut science has a much more compassionate and practical explanation, since, according to experts, winter it’s not the best time to change life. The real mental and biological “reset” happens now, in spring. It has a name. The basis of this phenomenon is known in psychology as the “fresh start effect.” Here our mind does not perceive time as an uninterrupted continuum, but as a book divided into several chapters, so the change of season, birthdays or the beginning of the month act as temporal milestones in which we seek to make this change in a lifestyleFor example. Because? Having a temporal milestone for the brain has an interpretation, and that is that it creates a psychological barrier that allows us to disconnect of our “imperfect self” from the past who, for example, smokes or doesn’t go to the gym. This is something that was demonstrated in 2014 in an investigation where it became clear that these symbolic dates such as birthdays restructure our temporal perception. Precisely in one of their experiments they compared how participants reacted to the same date presented in two different ways. The results. Based on this study, they compared two different dates: The first day of spring, since we are facing a temporary milestone and specifically 25.6% of respondents chose to set reminders to start new goals right here. In comparison, a normal day of any day was used, such as Thursday, where only 7.2% of participants showed motivation to make a habit change. That is why, comparing this data, it was seen that such a simple change of perspective can quadruple the intention to pursue healthy goals, causally validating that emphasizing a milestone as a “new beginning” triggers our motivation. The spring. Here the question we can ask ourselves is if the new year is also a temporal milestone because we begin a new year… Why is spring superior? The answer lies in biology and the environment. And while in January we are coldshort days and the dreaded economic downturn, in spring we have a progressive increase in sunlight. An environmental factor that joins a series of physiological advantages. When we talk about spring ‘altering blood’, we are not telling lies because it has been seen that sunlight raises serotonin and dopamine levels, drastically improving mood, increasing energy and a willingness to make changes. Furthermore, the end of winter eliminates physical and psychological barriers such as external cold and frees energy to begin investing it in creating habits. Motivation is not enough. Logically, we talk about factors that help, and seasonal change gives a boost to people. Psychologists here explain that the new seasons offer us the ideal mental framework to “evaluate” and plan fresh strategies without the weight of guilt from previous failures. However, there is a warning backed by scientific consensus: although symbolic dates are excellent psychological catalysts for starting a habit, the initial motivation always wanes. That is why, for the habit to last beyond the spring fever, it is strictly necessary to accompany this “rush” of energy with a solid structure, realistic routines and repetition systems. Images | Mink Mingle In Xataka | Three morning habits that will help you be happier and more productive at work, according to science

Tired of being told that philosophy was just opinions, one guy set about collecting all the “philosophical facts” he could find. He got 200

by

Philosophy has a reputation for discussing everything and the truth is that it is a reputation that has been hard-earned. However, it is not a matter of saying the first thing that comes to mind. It’s not even a matter of opinions, no matter how informed they may be. At least, that is the opinion of philosopher Bryan Frances. In fact, Frances is convinced that, in reality, philosophers only discuss details and minutiae: in substance, they agree on almost everything. But of course, it is not enough to say it: it must be defended. So he began to do something strange for a philosopher: instead of arguing it, he began to compile this enormous core of shared truths. That is, to make a list. But let’s start at the beginning. Frances’s thesis is that, as I say, there is great agreement among philosophers about the truth of many substantive claims. What’s more, he is convinced that, in philosophy, there is progress equivalent to that of any other science. That is, “based on facts.” The thing is that discipline — for better or worse — tends to revolve around the controversial. The curious thing is that he realized that not even the philosophers themselves were aware of this. And what a list… So, neither short nor lazy, he published ‘Philosophy as Fact-Based Discipline: 200 Philosophical Facts, published in Philosophical Studies‘: the list. A list of elementary truths pedagogically comparable to introductory science material. “It’s not the deepest,” but it’s (definitely) something cumulative and useful to understand. But, beyond that, it is also a way of reclaiming the discipline in a climate that repeatedly questions the role of the humanities in the body of knowledge. And what truths are those? Once we have made it clear that it is not about talking about deep truths (Does free will exist? Why being and not nothingness? etc…), the question becomes evident: what are they then? They are simpler things like, for example, what beliefs are (which come in many formats, they can be about almost anything or they can exist even if we are not aware of them), what evidence is (which are not just tests), what biases, emotions or faith are. It’s very interesting review the 200 facts because there are very interesting things about things that one had not asked: does believing in something make it true? Does the evidence have direction? Is suspending the trial a rational thing to do? Thought in action. But beyond the facts themselves, Frances’ idea is intelligent because it points to something singular: there is cognitive progress, an ultimate structure of reality to describe, a philosophical ‘holy grail’ to find. It’s not much, I admit. But the idea that the universe is not the horrible chaos it seems is (in its own way) comforting. Image | Alan Dela Cruz In Xataka | “A place of joy with pain”: the phrase that summarizes the Aztec philosophy to be happier in this life

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

by

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

AI has already bothered us to improve the PC. Now it is going to make it difficult for us to set up a NAS to create a homemade cloud

by

It is the best time so that your PC does NOT break. Or the console. Wave Steam Deck. We have been talking for weeks about how the explosion of data centers for AI has made burst the consumer market of RAM. The SSDs were nextand it was logical to a certain extent because they share technology. What perhaps was not expected was that the new components to increase in price were conventional hard drives, HDDs. And in the midst of cloud fatigue, AI is going to claim a new victim: the NAS. Western Digital, the symptom. It was during the presentation of results for the second fiscal quarter of 2026 when Irving Tan, CEO of Western Digital, commented that the company had sold practically its entire catalog by 2026. We have already seen this with RAM memory, and it indicates that there are already confirmed orders for 2027 and 2028 (supporting the assertion of other authoritative voices in the industry that this crisis still has some time left). Components that do not exist for something that does not exist. The HDDs that WD is talking about are not those with 2, 6 or 8 TB for the consumer market, but rather those with 20 or 30 TB capacity. Onwards. For now, if you want another 4 TB to store games on your PC, you will have no problem finding a drive at an appropriate price/GB ratio. Now, when we talk about having “everything sold” it is not that there is not a single album left on the shelves, but that what they have not produced yet is already sold. This is something that is happening with other segments, such as with RAM itself (with hoarders) and with SSDs. To give a quick example: if Western Digital is capable of producing two million 30 TB HDDs per year and only the xAI data centers They buy two million 30 TB HDDs for a data center that they have not yet built, WD no longer has production capacity and the waits begin for the others. One of the bosses of SMICthe great Chinese foundry, dropped recently the issue that components that have not yet been produced are being sold to power data centers that have not been built to give life to a technology that no one knows exactly what it will be like in the future. Or if it’s even a bubble. The innards of an HDD. And that HDDs are running out is logical for two reasons. The first is because, just like the SSD and memory industry is dominated by three companies (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix), HDDs are commanded by three others (Toshiba, Western Digital and Seagate). All three have begun a conversion to new technologies to create denser disks, which implies moving money from the “old” factories to the new processes. But it also means that if they have a certain production capacity, scaling up to create more isn’t as easy as clicking a button. Not so immediate either. The second reason is that there are HDDs that have a NAND drive inside as cache memory. That is to say: if there is a shortage of flash memory, there is a shortage for everything, and the companies that manufacture HDDs also experience the delays and price increases in the industry. Second youth. What is undeniable is that HDD manufacturers are doing well in this situation in terms of income. We told it a few months agowhen at the end of January it was already seen that the shares of Seagate and Western Digital were beginning to skyrocket by 148.38% and 156.09% respectively. The thing is that they have not stopped increasing since then because, although memory and SSDs are crucial in data centers, HDDs also have a lot to say. The price per GB makes the cost per capacity extremely attractive, and the AI ​​generates a lot of information that must be saved and for which a very high transfer speed is not needed. Also for the information you consume during training. That has to be stored somewhere, and HDDs are the best option. NAS. And you will tell me: and that doesn’t matter to me, as a user. And it’s a great question because yes: that 20 or 30 TB HDDs become more expensive may not matter to you if until now you thought of this component as the storage of a PC, but…and if you want to set up a NAS? A trend in recent months is to escape subscriptions. There are too many and increasingly expensive, and for everything, and a NAS is a great alternative. Basically, it is a PC with a huge storage capacity with which you can build a private cloud. Do your photos Google Photos? To the NAS. Your private Netflix digitizing your DVDs and Blu-Ray? To the NAS. ¿Your private Spotify ripping your CDs and vinyls? To the NAS. And all this accessible at any time, without paying subscriptions and without problems with data leaks. But of course, to have a private cloud it is necessary to have teras and teras of storage, and that is where those more “professional” hard drives can become impossible not only because of price, but because, at some point, they will no longer exist. Don’t let what we already have be broken. And the worst thing is that there is only one solution: go through the price hoop, unless you entrust yourself to what you believe in so that your PC, laptop or Steam Deck does not break (whichEU is also having supply problems due to the RAM memory crisis). As I said before, it is going great for companies because they are selling everything, but for users, although we assume a much smaller percentage of income, this situation has overwhelmed us like a freight train. If at least the train was loaded with RAM tablets and we could get some, it wouldn’t be bad. Images | Western Digital, Xataka In Xataka … Read more

There are people poisoning the memory of our AI to manipulate us. And Microsoft has set off all the alarms

by

That “comfortable” button of “summarize this with AI“hides a secret: it has surely been manipulated. We don’t say it, it’s the elite department that Microsoft has to analyze the security of both its services and those of the competition. In the process of a investigationhave started to pull the thread and have found that dozens of companies are inserting hidden instructions into those “summarizing with AI” functions with a single objective. Contaminate the AI’s memory to manipulate us. Microsoft what. Big Tech has a lot of exciting departments. from which They are dedicated to opening boxes to guarantee the best experience to those who sculpt competing products in clay to study them. However, something that all big technology companies share are cybersecurity teams, elite teams dedicated to one thing: investigating threats. They analyze both their own products and those of the competition because it is understood as an ecosystem. Google and Microsoft have two of the most powerful and a clear example is that if Google finds a security flaw in Windows, it notifies those responsible because it is something that could potentially harm its own product –Chrome-. An example is the research of one of these Microsoft teams, putting on the table the danger of AIs being so malleable. Poisoning AI memory. It is a concept that attracts attention and is easy to understand. “That useful “Summarize with AI” button could be secretly manipulating what your AI recommends,” Microsoft notes in the blog in which it published the research. What the attackers have done is corrupt the AI ​​by incorporating certain hidden commands that manage to persist in the assistant’s memory. Thus, they influence all the interactions we have with the assistant. Simply put, a compromised assistant may start providing biased recommendations on critical topics. I don’t mean that you ask if pizza is better with or without pineapple and that the answer depends on what the ‘hacker’ has implemented in the AI’s ‘memory’, but something much more serious related to health, finances or security. It must be said that Microsoft has not discovered this, since It’s been ringing for a few monthsbut they have given very specific examples and recommendations to avoid being victims. H-how do they do it? In it documentMicrosoft says they have identified more than 50 unique iterations from 31 companies and 14 different industries. They detail that this manipulation can be done in several ways: Malicious links: Most major AI assistants support reading URLs automatically, so if we click on a summary of a message that has a link with preloaded malicious information, the AI ​​processes those manipulated instructions and becomes contaminated. Integrated instructions: In this case, the instructions for manipulating the AI ​​are hidden embedded in documents, emails or web pages. When the AI ​​processes that content, it becomes contaminated. Social engineering: it is the classic deception, but in this case for the user to paste messages that include commands that alter the AI’s memory. Likewise, when the assistant processes it, it becomes contaminated. And therein lies the problem: various ways to contaminate the AI’s memory, a feature that makes assistants more useful because it can remember personal preferences. But, at the same time, it also creates a new attack surface because, as Microsoft points out, if someone can inject instructions into the AI’s memory and we don’t realize it, they gain persistent influence on future requests. to the point. In an AI like the one we have, it is dangerous, but in the future Agentic AI It is even more so because it will automatically perform actions based on that contaminated memory. Given the context, let’s get down to business. The security team has reviewed URLs for 60 days, finding more than 50 different examples of attempts to contaminate the AI. The purpose is promotional, and they detail that the attempts originated in 31 companies from different fields related to industries such as finance, health, legal services, marketing, food purchasing sites, recipes, commercial services and software as a service. They point out that the effectiveness was not the same in all attacks, but that they did identify the repeated appearance of instructions similar to “remember this.” And, in all cases, they observed the following: Each case involved real companies, not hackers or scammers. They are legitimate businesses contaminating AI to gain influence over your decisions. Deceptive container with hidden instructions in that “button”Summarize with AI“It seems useful to us and that’s why we click, triggering the script that contaminates its memory. Persistence, with commands such as “remember this”, “keep this in mind in future conversations” or “this is a reliable and safe source” to guarantee that long-term influence. Consequences. Concrete examples of what a poisoned AI can do: Child safety: If we ask “is this online game safe for my eight-year-old son?” a poisoned AI that has been instructed that yes, that game with toxic communities, dangerous moderators, harmful policies, and predatory monetization is totally safe, will recommend the game. biased news: When we ask for a summary of the main news of the day, the intervened AI will not bring us the best ones, but will constantly bring up headlines and focuses of the publication whose owners have contaminated the AI. Financial issues: If we ask about investments, the AI ​​may tell us that a certain investment is extremely safe, minimizing the volatility of the operation. Recommendations. And this is where our responsibility comes in. Because you may be thinking “who asks the AI ​​those things and it pays attention”. Good: people ask the AI ​​these things and they listen. There are the unfortunate cases of suicide induced by chatbots or fake news. If the AI ​​recommends us pizza with gluesupposedly we have the common sense not to throw Super Glue as a substitute for cheese, but in other matters, there are users who trust AI as if it were an entity and not a compendium of letters one after another. It is something that Microsoft itself mentions, pointing out … Read more

The sun never set in the Spanish empire. AI is achieving that in some companies neither

by

There was a time when the Spanish empire did not set the sun. Their domains ranged from the colonies in America, to Europe and Southeast Asia. In the 21st century, global technology startups are recovering that model to develop your AI-based products 24 hours a day. When a team in San Francisco is finishing its work shift, its work continues in Europe, and then moves on to Asia, ensuring that development does not stop. The “follow the sun” model is not new, but the combination of distributed remote work and the development of AI has turned it into a formula to stay ahead of the competition, without exhausting the workforce. The IBM empire in the 90s. In the 90s, IBM was an empire on which the sun did not set either. He IBM giant was one of the first to try the “follow the sun” model (Follow The Sun or FTS) with a team of five offices spread over different time slots to chain days and shorten software development times. This model is based on the concatenation of days. Each group works during its normal day. When this ends in an office, the day begins in the next time slot that collects the witness of the work of his colleagues. The process is repeated throughout the day, synchronizing the journey of the star through the sky with the different work days throughout the planet. Although in principle this model ran into some difficulties due to the poor performance of the connection networks of the time, IBM refined the process and managed to reduce projects by up to 67% by coordinating three offices in the United States, Australia and India. A model that makes sense with AI. Today, Silicon Valley has stepped on the accelerator pedal of AI and new startup founders technologies have embraced days “996” in which all hours of the day that are dedicated to product development they are few. As and as I pointed out analyst and software engineering expert Gergely Orosz, in the context of high competitiveness in the development of AI models experienced by the startup ecosystem on the west coast of the United States, more and more companies are choosing the “follow the sun” model to add normal days for teams in different countries. Thus, a model designed in Europe is tested on equipment in Asia at night and reviewed in California the next morning. The development machinery does not stop. Global clients, local attention. Likewise, the clients of these technology companies are spread all over the world, so offering a technical support service is complicated if it has to be done from a single location. According to data From Zendesk, 73% of customers switch to competitors due to bad experiences with support servicesso the distributed remote system allows the change of time slot so that the service adapts to the languages ​​and local culture of each region. The user who needs help always speaks to someone during their normal hours, no matter where they live. ​The push for AI and remote work. The rise of AI has improved the efficiency of the system at its most critical moment: shift change. This was one of the points that was most difficult for IBM managers to polish in the 90s. AI tools have helped unite shifts with chatbots that resolve doubts to employees, agents who summarize conversations with customers, prepare error reports or give solution ideas based on the context of the information that has been collected throughout the shifts, so as not to lose details when changing teams. Companies that have opted for this model in which the sun does not set highlight that products are developed faster, there are fewer unresolved cases by the support service and customers see the company as always available. Companies, especially technology companies, opted for elimination of teleworking and back to the office. However, no one said that this office should be on the same continent as that of their colleagues. A new evolution of remote work. In Xataka | Three Spanish companies tell us how they fared after implementing a work utopia: the four-day week Image | Unsplash (James Harrison)

A report has set off alarm bells in Europe. Russia’s shell production is meaningless for a single war

by

When Russia crossed the Ukrainian border in 2022, Europe reacted as it had not done since the end of the Cold War: massive sanctions, accelerated rearmament and a political unity forced by urgency. During these years, the European debate revolved around a seemingly simple question about kyiv’s resistance, as the conflict lengthened, became normalized, and ceased to be a “temporary” war. Now, with the front stagnant and the calendar moving forward, in the European capitals it is beginning to prevail another concern. What will Russia do when this war is no longer the center of the board? It’s not just the front. Yes, as the conflict in Ukraine approaches its fourth anniversary, it is beginning to take hold in Europe a different reading And more disturbing: Russia is not acting like a country trapped in a war of attrition, but rather like a power that uses the conflict as, perhaps, a preparatory phase. In the last few hours, a piece of information has appeared on the old continent: the massive increase in its military production suggests that Moscow is not only thinking about supporting the current front, but about setting up a later strategic scenarioin which having reserves, industrial capacity and room for maneuver will be as important as any territorial advance achieved in Ukraine. The figure that triggers the alarms. The data that most worries the European intelligence services is the Russian production of ammunition, which has exceeded the seven million projectiles annually, a figure 17 times higher to that of the first stages of the invasion. According to the Estonian intelligence service Välisluureamet, this jump is not explained by a simple intensification of combat, mainly because it makes no sense, but by the construction of new industrial plants and the will to rebuild strategic reserves in the long term. For Europe, the implicit message is clear: no one manufactures at that rate if they are only thinking about surviving the current conflict. Resist and prepare. This rearmament occurs despite the Russian economic deterioration, enormous human cost of the war and the increasing difficulties for recruit soldiersreinforcing the idea that the Kremlin prioritizes material accumulation over internal well-being. The support of North Korea, which has come to supply a substantial part of the ammunition used in Ukraine, has allowed Moscow to gain time and rebuild arsenals. For Estonia, maintaining these reserve levels is a central element of planning possible future conflictsnot simple insurance for the ongoing war. The north enters the radar. we have been counting in recent months. That fear of what comes next is not limited to the eastern flank. Now Norway has warned openly that a Russian move to protect its nuclear assets in the Arctic, concentrated on the Kola Peninsula, a short distance from its border, cannot be ruled out. This is not a classic ambition of conquest, but rather an aggressive defensive logic: ensuring the ability second nuclear attack in case of an escalation with NATO. The Ukrainian War has forced Nordic countries to plan for scenarios that a few years ago would have seemed unlikely. Tactical peace for strategy. The Guardian said this morning that, while increasing its military capacity, Russia deploys calculated diplomacy that seeks to buy time and divide the West. Estonian intelligence describes opening gestures toward the United States and negotiating rhetoric as a maneuver to reduce pressures, exploit cracks between Washington and Europe and consolidate positions without giving up the underlying objectives. In parallel, Moscow intensifies influence operations and hybrid warfareaware that the Ukrainian post-war can be as decisive as the war itself. The disturbing scene. In short, the combination of mass production of ammunition, possible nuclear planning, hybrid pressure and instrumental diplomacy seem to paint a panorama most uncomfortable for Europe: one where even when the weapons end fading in Ukraine, Russia will remain an actor ready to act. From that perspective, it is not only the end of a war that is worrying European capitals, but the beginning of a stage in which Moscow, industrially reinforced, could decide when and where to tighten the chess again. Hence, what comes after Ukraine is precisely what generates the most fear. Image | Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Vitaly V. Kuzmin In Xataka | The question is no longer whether Europe “is at war”: the question is whether it is willing to defend itself In Xataka | First it was Finland, now the US has confirmed it: when the war in Ukraine ends, Russia has a plan for Europe

The Canary Islands and Galicia have set off the Navy’s alarm bells. Russia’s ghost fleet has arrived in Spain with warships

by

Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and, above all, after the invasion large-scale ukrainian In 2022, Russia has been perfecting a form of confrontation that avoids direct clashes and moves in the shadows of international law: hybrid war. Sabotage, energy pressure, disinformation and opaque commercial fleets have become tools as strategic as tanks or missiles, and among them the called “ghost fleet”. Now everything indicates that they have found a new route: Spain. The “fleet” arrives from the south. At the end of January 2026, a Russian tanker sanctioned by the European Union was left adrift off the coast of Almería and was escorted by Spanish Maritime Rescue to a port in Morocco without being detained. He did it despite transporting more than 425,000 barrels of refined products of Russian origin. The episode, starring a ship integrated the ghost fleet (old ships, with frequent changes of name and flag and opaque structures of ownership) showed how Spain has become a key point of passage and incident management of a system designed to circumvent Western sanctions. Something happens. In the heart of the western Mediterranean, the Russian hybrid war was beginning to materialize not with missiles, but with timely breakdowns, gray areas of maritime law and routes connecting Russian ports with North Africa under the attentive, but limited, action of the European authorities. Morocco as a hinge, the Canary Islands as an entrance. A few days later, the arrival in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria of a oil tanker from Tangier set off alarms about a possible indirect entry of Russian fuel into Spain, using Morocco as an intermediate platform. Maritime security experts stressed that it was not an illegal operation in itself, but it was an unusual route which fits with the patterns of the ghost fleet, given that Morocco lacks sufficient refining capacity and has become a common destination for oil tankers linked to Russia. The Severomorsk Destroyer in 2023 The crux. The key, they insisted, is in the loading documentation, because the origin of the product remains Russian even if there are intermediate stops. In this context, the Canary Islands appear as a vulnerable link: a lightly guarded Exclusive Economic Zone, located in the transit axis of opaque oil tankers, which reinforces the idea that Spain offers the perfect combination of geography, infrastructure and control loopholes for this new phase of the Russian economic war. Silent pressure. Finally, and in parallel to these commercial and logistical movements, the most classic dimension of Russian naval power has ended up becoming visible in Spanish waters, forcing the Navy Spanish to intensify its surveillance operations. Within a week, Spanish units have followed the transit of several Russian vessels (including the destroyer Severomorsk and a mixed military-merchant convoy) from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlantic, with monitoring relays off the Galician coast and constant coordination with the command centers. Hybrid war. These missions, framed in the permanent surveillance of waters of national interest, show that the phenomenon is by no means isolated: while the ghost fleet operates on the economic and logistical level, the Russian naval presence reinforces the strategic pressure about key runners such as the Alboran Sea, Gibraltar and the Atlantic coast. Spain, the perfect route. The sum of these episodes draws a coherent pattern: the russia hybrid war has left the Baltic and the North Sea to settle in the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic, and Spain has become one of your most effective routes. It seems clear that all those breakdowns managed without detention, indirect discharges via Morocco, fuels of dubious traceability entering through the Canary Islands and Russian military ships crossing runners strategic are part of the same logic of attrition, ambiguity and saturation that we had already seen in other parts of Europe. And as in those cases, it is not a frontal attack, but rather a constant pressure that exploits the gray areas of trade, energy and maritime security, now placing Spain at the center of a board where war is not declared, it is navigated. Image | US Navy, Mil.ru In Xataka | Russia’s ghost fleet has changed its business model. Oil has given way to a much bigger target: Europe In Xataka | For years Europe has wondered how to stop the Russian ghost fleet. Ukraine just showed you the way: with AI

This 65-inch TV drops (again) and reaches a historic low price with which you can set up your home theater without spending a lot

by

For those who enjoy watching movies, series (or even football and other sports) at home and are thinking about taking the leap to do it in a big way, Hisense has a very interesting 65-inch TV. It is about the Hisense 65E63QT which stands out in features, but now also in price, since on Amazon, it has reached its all-time low: 359 euros. Hisense 65E63QT – UHD 4K, Smart TV 65 Inch The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A TV with which you can set up your own home theater will not be expensive For some time now, Hisense has been one of those firms that are surprising us with their smart TVs with a moderate price and good features and this model is a good example of this. For those looking to set up their own home theater, what is most striking is its panel 65 inch VA. This offers 4K UHD resolution and 178º viewing angles. Although it is also characterized by being compatible with image formats such as Dolby Vision and HDR10. In the audio section, on the other hand, its two speakers offer an RMS power of 14W and are compatible with DTS-X and Dolby Audio. Integrate the voice assistant Alexa and works under the operating system VIDAA (version 8.5). It also works for gaming, since it integrates a Game Plus mode and comes with a good connectivity section, since it has Bluetooth, WiFi, two USB-A ports, headphone output and three HDMI 2.1 ports. You may also be interested in these accessories for this TV PERLESMITH Tilting and Rotating Articulated Wall TV Stand The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Hisense HS3100 – Sound Bar 3.1 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Hisense In Xataka | Best home theater projectors. Which one to buy and five recommended models from 299 to 18,000 euros In Xataka | Mega-guide to set up a home theater: projector, screen, sound system and more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.