sounds

An alliance between Ford and Geely sounds like melodic music for Almussafes. The reality is much more complex

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Ford is looking for a Chinese car. Reason: here. This is the sign that could hang on the door of the Ford factory in Almussafes (Valencia). The American company is looking for partners in China to produce electric cars and Geely seems to be one of the best positioned brands. Nor is it the first that has raised rumors about possible collaborations with the American brand, which, in addition, is already linked to Volkswagen or Renault. But what does Almussafes have to do with all this? Ford and Geely. The last brand with which Ford has been related in recent days has been with Geely. According to Reuters, Ford and Geely, Chinese group that owns Volvo, Polestar or Smart, among othersare holding talks to produce cars in Europe in one of the spaces that the company has on our continent. In addition, collaboration is being studied for the development of shared technologies such as autonomous driving. In Reuters They point to two sources who were aware of this information and the company has not denied that this is happening. “We have conversations with many companies about many things. Some are fruitful and others are not,” the Americans assure the news agency. For its part, Geely has not commented. Ford moves. It is not the first time that the company has been related to a Chinese company. On this occasion, it is said that negotiations have been underway for months and that Ford would have sent workers to the Asian country to advance a hypothetical agreement. Coincidence or not, Jim Farley has been traveling in China recently and He has been complimenting Chinese manufacturers for a long time. One of those companies that he has complimented and with which it has also been related It’s Xiaomi. Farley himself took a Xiaomi SU7 to the United States and has not failed to point out all the good things this product does. The collaboration agreement, it seems evident, would be for Europe since Chinese cars have an almost impossible future in the United States as a consequence of the Government’s own veto. Why Geely? The conversations with Geely seem to have much more substance than the possible collaborations with Xiaomi. The automobile conglomerate has brands that are not unknown to the European public (Volvo, Lotus, Smart…) whose electric cars do not have to break that barrier of entry into the European collective imagination as a “Chinese car.” However, Geely has a problem: they pay a lot of tariffs. As many as 37.6% after The European Union will withdraw in 2024 to try to protect an industry that was threatened by cheaper electric cars. Since then, the impact of the Chinese car has been limited to the lowest priced units. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change whether the negotiations between the European Union and China They still don’t get ahead. Collaborating with Ford and using the company’s facilities would allow Geely to produce electric cars without going through the checkout. And although labor costs are higher than the Chinese, they would not have to build new facilities because they would take advantage of those that the company has already built. Almussafes? In the information of Reuters It is assured that “Ford’s plant in Valencia would probably be the factory involved in these talks, said a person familiar with the matter.” However, some details must be taken into account. The factory is running right now at half throttlewith a Ford Kuga that is facing its last days on the market and that is not going to be renewed. The promise is to produce a multi-energy vehicle small size until 2028 when an electric car should arrive. To do this, the plant would need a deep reconversion that Ford is reluctant to carry out because North Americans are obtaining very low sales with their electric cars. A solution, therefore, would be to reach an agreement with Geely so that the Chinese company would take advantage of these facilities by making the appropriate conversions. The only doubt is that, right now, the plan is to produce a small model with a combustion engine. Electrifying space can put in check this multi-energy car that Ford should start producing soon. For now, the newspaper Levant reports that the brand will send a Ford delegation in the coming days to speak with those responsible for the factory. Ford’s mess with the electric car. Little by little, Ford has been falling into a small hole with the electric car which has a complicated solution. The brand has decided that its future lies in two clearly differentiated family lines: one made by themselveswith the Ford seal as quality and names clearly differentiated from the rest of the range (Mustang or Bronco) and lower cost cars manufactured by third parties. Europe is heading towards a future where the electric car seems the only solution. Until now, Ford’s investments have fallen on deaf ears and that is why it has reached a agreement with Volkswagen which has borne fruit electric Ford Explorer and the Ford Capri. And it has also signed an agreement with Renault so that the French can produce them in France. a sort of Renault 5 and Renault 4 with the blue oval. Ford promises that the cars will have their own American essence. At the same time, Ford focuses its own models on high-priced combustion or electric vehicles, such as the Mustang Mach-E. This allows them to achieve higher profit margins and bring combustion models to Europe in dribs and drabs whose high price justifies the increase in the final volume of emissions to be presented to regulators. What are the exits? At the moment, the first information points to different exits in the event that the negotiations between Ford and Geely come to fruition. First, it must be taken into account that what Geely may be most interested in is a car factory capable of producing electric vehicles as quickly as possible. Ford has a … Read more

Washing chicken “to clean it” sounds hygienic. Science says it’s a bad idea (and very dangerous)

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“Chicken should never be washed.” This time, it was Higinio Gómez (one of the most renowned gourmet polleros in Spain) who reopened the debate in an interview in El País. But the issue is recurrent and inexplicably generates very opposing positions: from those convinced that washing chicken is a way to “remove germs or dirt” to those who, rightly, say that it is a terrible idea. But, as Gómez himself would say in his establishment, ‘let’s go in parts’. What’s wrong with the chicken? Let’s start with the most basic: nothing happens to the chicken. The risk linked to ‘washing chicken’ has nothing to do with the chicken itself. It has to do with cross contamination: the bacteria from raw chicken (which would be eliminated during preparation) transfer to the hands, sink, countertops, and various utensils. Often, in fact, when washing chicken we end up putting those bacteria in foods that are ready to eat. The EFSA estimated in billions of euros annually the impact of pollution Campylobacter (a bug especially linked to chicken). Sometimes it’s because you cook it wrong, yes; but often it is due to handling raw food without any type of rigor. What the evidence says. In a now classic observational study by the North American USDA, was discovered that, in fact, what I just explained was what really happened: among those who washed the chicken, 60% contaminated the sink and up to 26% ended up transferring bacteria to the salad. And, in fact, we already have experimental studies that explain the mechanism: beyond the obvious, “washing generates droplets capable of transferring bacteria and increasing environmental pollution” And why do people insist on washing it? That’s a good question with numerous answers: from the cultural and historical heritage (after all, when the chicken was slaughtered at home, washing did make more sense) to a lack of sense of control that ends up turning against us. Let’s be practical: How to avoid cross contamination when cooking chicken? Separate raw chicken from other foods: It is a good idea to keep the chicken raw separated from other foods. This is always true, but especially with all those that are consumed raw (such as fruits and vegetables). Use different utensils: We have talked about it with the cutting boardsbut it is especially effective advice with knives and other utensils. In fact, the recommendation is that, if we do not have several sets of utensils, wash them carefully between uses with hot water and soap. Wash hands and surfaces thoroughly: After handling raw chicken, you should not only wash your hands with soap and hot water for at least 20 seconds; Instead, we should disinfect all surfaces with which it has been in contact. Image | Christian Guillen / Imani In Xataka | Washing raw chicken increases risk of foodborne infection

Reopening nuclear power plants sounds very spectacular, but Google has a plan B in case it’s not enough: solar energy

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Data centers for are insatiable monsters those who are responsible for them must feed. OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Anthropic and Google are burning money riding colossal data centers for training and management of artificial intelligence. But these installations are not expensive to set up: they are also expensive to maintain. They require a considerable amount of energy to functionand Google has just received a ‘shot’ of renewables. All thanks to a direct connection to the largest system in the United States. Renewables to power AI. Google and TotalEnergies have just signed a agreement of energy purchases for 15 years. The contract stipulates that the energy company will deliver 1.5 TWh of electricity from its Montpelier solar plant, in Ohio, to Google. The plant is still under construction and they estimate that it will have a capacity of 49 MW, but the most important thing is that it will be connected directly to the electricity system. PJM. It is the largest network operator in the United States. It covers 13 states and data centers are representing a relevant portion of the operator’s pie: in its last annual auction, the load of these facilities PJM capacity sale triggered at 7.3 billion dollars, 82% more. Astronomical needs. In the statement from TotalEnergies, the company that this agreement illustrates its ability to meet the growing energy demands of the major technology companies. The problem is that it is not enough. If we focus on Google, the consumption of its data centers was 30.8 million megawatt hours of electricity. The company has been focused on AI for years, but the recent ‘boom’ has made it double what its centers consumed in 2020 (14.4 million MWh). Currently, data centers are estimated to account for 95.8% of Google’s total electricity budget. But it’s not just Google: the International Energy Agency esteem that global data centers consumed 415 TWh last year, representing approximately 1.5% of global electricity consumption. It seems little put in percentage, but Spain consumed in 2024 231,808 GWh, or 231 TWh, in 2024. The data centers of a handful of companies alone consumed twice as much as an entire country. And the estimate is that this data center consumption will double by 2030, reaching 945 TWh. Renewables are not enough. Now, although renewables are a support for the total energy required by data centerssolar and wind power have two limitations: intermittency and variability. Generation depends on weather conditions and time of day, meaning it fluctuates dramatically even throughout the same day. This instability clashes head-on with the high reliability and availability requirements of data centers. These are installations that must operate continuously and cannot assume cuts or Unforeseeable drops in supplysince AI or cloud storage would suffer the consequences. These renewables require backup batteries, but it is complicated and expensive to have such a large number of batteries just to power data centers. Pulling the gas and looking at the nuclear. That’s where other sources come into play. On the one hand, nuclear. In October 2024, Google signed the world’s first corporate agreement to acquire nuclear energy from SMR reactors. The first will come into operation in 230 and it is expected that, together, they will be able to satisfy the technology company with 500 MW of capacity by 2035. On the other hand, natural gas. In October of this year, the Broadwing Energy Center project began, a new natural gas power plant that will have a capacity of 400 MW and is scheduled to come into play at the end of 2029. Decarbonization and pressure. And the big question is… doesn’t the use of gas for AI clash with the technology companies’ objectives of achieving decarbonization percentages for both 2030 and 2050? We have already seen that oil companies have been getting off the renewables bandwagon because they have seen that fossil fuels are still relevant in the technology industry, but in the case of Google, they rely on the fact that projects like the Broadwing Energy Center They will have CCS systems. This means that it will have carbon capture system that will be able to permanently “sequester” 90% of the emissions. It means burying the problem, literally, since the CO₂ will be stored a mile underground. In 2020, before the AI ​​boom, the company established the goal of operating with carbon-free energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week by 2030. It will be interesting to see how they plan to offset these emissions thanks to renewables, but the IAE estimates that the demand for data centers will not stop growing in the short term and that adds another problem: a increased pressure on the electrical grid which is added as another element to manage. Because the big underlying problem is that the demand for energy is growing at a faster rate than the capacity to generate new electricity, and it is something that has an impact on companies’ bills, but also in homes. Images | Unsplash, Google Data Center In Xataka | China does not have a spending problem with AI. What it has is a huge income gap compared to its main rival

The largest nuclear power plant in Europe has been connected to diesel generators for a month. It’s as encouraging as it sounds.

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Europe is once again walking a nuclear tightrope. After more than three years of war, the largest atomic plant on the continent —the Ukrainian Zaporizhia plant— has gone from being an industrial symbol to becoming at a point of friction capable of triggering an emergency of continental reach. In parallel, other plants in the country operate at reduced power after attacks on the electrical grid. The situation is so unstable that the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, recently traveled to Kaliningrad, Russia, for emergency talks with the head of Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev, according to the Anadolu agency. It is a gesture that reflects the extent to which the risk is real. An attack that left two centers at minimum. According to a statement from the IAEAa military attack during the night of November 7 damaged an electrical substation critical to nuclear security. This incident left the Khmelnitsky and Rivne plants disconnected from one of their two 750 kilovolt lines and forced the electricity operator to order a power reduction in several of its reactors. Ten days later, one of the lines was still out of service and three reactors continued to operate at limited power. The agency emphasizes that these substations are essential nodes of the network: they allow the voltage levels that feed the security and cooling systems to be transformed and maintained. Without them, plants cannot guarantee safe operation. One month depending on diesel generators. The situation in Zaporizhzhia is even more critical. According to an opinion column by Najmedin Meshkati, professor of engineering and international relations published in the Financial Timesthe plant spent a full month without outside power after its two main lines were cut. During that time it survived solely on diesel generators, a resource that the industry considers strictly temporary: they are designed to run for around 24 hours, not for weeks. Technicians were only able to repair the lines under the protection of localized ceasefires negotiated by the IAEA, according to NucNet. Even so, one of the two restored lines was disconnected again on November 14 due to the activation of a protection system. Grossi summed it up like this: “The electrical situation at the plant remains extremely fragile.” The condition for a shut down reactor to remain safe. Although Zaporizhzhia’s six reactors have been on cold shutdown for more than three years, the plant requires a constant three to four megawatts to maintain cooling pumps and other essential systems, according to Meshkati. The professor emphasizes that even huge emergency batteries require external electricity to stay charged. It is a vicious circle: without the electrical grid, batteries are used, but without external electricity, these batteries cannot be recharged and, without both, the cooling systems fail. And without cooling the risk of nuclear fuel melting or overheating increases. The University of Southern California professor warns that this scenario reproduces the conditions that transformed Fukushima into a global disaster: “What turned an earthquake into a catastrophe was the total failure of the electrical system.” And he adds that, unlike 2011 in Japan, this time the risk comes from deliberate human action. A network reduced to its minimum expression. Before the war, according to the Kyiv Independentthe Zaporizhia plant was connected through ten power lines. Today it only has one or two operations and has lost all connection ten times since the beginning of the invasion. The IAEA itself has described the situation power plant as “extremely precarious” and “clearly not sustainable” when it depends for long periods on diesel generators. Short and medium term risks. The notices in the last report on Ukraine by the IAEA point in the same direction: the main danger is not a Chernobyl-type explosion, but a prolonged cooling failure. This scenario could cause overheating of the reactors in cold shutdown, damage to the spent fuel pools and a possible localized or regional radioactive release, with the consequent need to create an exclusion zone in the heart of agricultural Europe. For its part, according to Meshkatiadds two other relevant elements. On the one hand, it points out that a serious accident will exceed the economic impact of Fukushima, estimated at about $500 billion. An incident of that magnitude would affect agriculture, transport, supply chains and the European insurance market. On the other hand, he maintains that if Russia manages to consolidate the precedent that an occupying army can take control of a nuclear power plant and connect it to its own network, the global nuclear security architecture would be seriously compromised. It would be a precedent without equivalent since the creation of international standards that regulate the civil use of atomic energy. Is there a meeting point? The IAEA has acted as an intermediary between Moscow and kyiv on multiple occasions. According to the Anadolu agencyGrossi traveled to Kaliningrad to meet with Likhachev, director of Rosatom, in order to directly discuss the situation in Zaporizhzhia and the minimum conditions to guarantee nuclear safety. At the same time, the agency is trying to technically shore up the Ukrainian electrical system. According to their own statementshas so far coordinated 174 deliveries of essential equipment – ​​switches, electrical cabinets, radiation monitoring stations, vehicles and computer equipment – ​​worth more than 20.5 million euros, intended to sustain nuclear security in Ukraine during the war. Nuclear security supported by fragile cables Europe breathes thanks to a handful of cables repaired under fire and diesel generators that have already proven to be well beyond their limits. As the Financial Times explainsthe continent’s security depends on electricity continuing to arrive and on the parties respecting the fragile ceasefires needed to repair lines when they go down. Grossi summed it up with a mix of relief and alarm after the restoration of one of the lines: “It is a good day for nuclear security, although the situation remains highly precarious.” And the precarious thing, in this case, is that a new attack, a mechanical failure or a downed line is enough to bring … Read more

now it sounds like an imminent dress rehearsal

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It happened during the cold warwhen Soviet engineers and military personnel developed a powerful project whose purpose was simple but disturbing: to create a last line of physical defense capable of destroying objects that fall from the sky. Now that “the hypersonic and the terminal maneuvers once again put traditional defense frameworks in check, that forgotten experiment reappears as an unexpected piece of the contemporary puzzle: not even an anti-ballistic missile no space shieldbut a brutally simple idea that could help respond to threats that no longer obey the old rules. Origin and purpose. As we said, in the middle of the Cold War, the USSR explored an exceptional concept: an active defense system to protect intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos against terminally advanced enemy nuclear warheads. under the name Mozyr (izdeliye 171), developed by KB Mashinostroyeniya With the direct supervision of Minister Ustinov and the participation of 250 companies from 22 ministries, the objective was to create a kind of “shotgun-type” kinetic shield capable of shooting down American warheads that fell on the Soviet missile fields, compensating for the intrinsic vulnerability of the fixed silos within the nuclear triad. Technical architecture and mechanism. In essence, Mozyr consisted of a multi-gun battery (with sources varying between 80 and several hundred tubes) that fired rods of tungsten or high-strength steel to form a dense cloud oriented to the approach vector of the enemy warhead. The system integrated detection, guidance and control of own fire, calculating density and geometry of the salvo of projectiles according to threat, operating automatically. According to the documentsthe defeat of the target was achieved by kinetic closure at about 6 km/s in the lower atmosphere, a sufficient condition, according to Soviet engineers, to prevent the initiation of a nuclear detonation. Diagram in Russian showing the basic principle of operation of the Mozyr system. It also shows how key components of the system, including projectile launchers, were projected under rotating armored domes Tests in Kamchatka. Although it was not deployed operationally, it was built and tested. Between 1985 and 1988, tests were carried out in Kura (Kamchatka Peninsula), with a simulated silo and a remote command post. Demilitarized ICBMs were used SS-18 Mod 4 as targets from Plesetsk or Baikonur. Many of the testimonies describe night events in which the arrival of the reentry vehicle lit up the sky before fragmenting after the impact of the “swarm” of projectiles, verifying the interception. The radar integrated in the tests was the 5N65 (Flat Twin) of the failed system ABM 5K17. In 1991, state tests ended after funding was cut after the failed coup and the Soviet collapse, not because of technical infeasibility. Fairly basic diagrams showing parts of the 5N65 phased array radar from a CIA document Legal compatibility. It was one of the keys to the project and the sole idea of ​​implementing it. They counted TWZ analysts that Russian sources claimed that Mozyr did not contravene he ABM Treaty of 1972since it prohibited widely deployed systems, but allowed one ABM site per country, although the interpretation is debatable. In parallel, the United States evaluated a twin concept (Swarmjet) to protect silos from MX/Peacekeeper with thousands of unguided rockets, but it never went into hardware. After 2002, with death of the ABM Treaty, the legal straitjacket ceased to exist, which reopens the strategic relevance of low-cost solutions. Strategic relevance compared to MIRV. Mozyr would have had to deal even then with MIRV (like the SS-18 Mod 5 with ten RVs) multiplying targets and risk of saturation. Since then, the challenge is older: modern tactics penetration aidsdecoys, fake object armies, and hypersonic glider vehicles without terminal propulsion that maneuver and degrade discrimination. A silo APS today would face more density, more ambiguity and greater terminal kinematics. Even so, a “cheap kinetic wall” poses a different strategic return than expensive and scarce exoatmospheric interceptors. Nuclear context. The United States changes its strength Minuteman III for him LGM-35A Sentinelcontemplates returning to MIRV, and maintains in parallel the SLBM Trident D5 in Ohio and future Columbia. China expands silos and MIRV. Russia maintains SS-18 Mod 6 and UR-100N with Avangard. In echoes of 2012, there were allusions to reactivate a system analogous to Mozyr. What does it mean? That, in an environment where the volume of terminal threats skyrockets, and ABM munition is expensive, finite and attackable, that last-layer kinetic APS would be, if discrimination and synchronization are mastered, a multiplier of silo survival and, therefore, of the credibility of “second-strike” deterrence. Balance. If you also want, the Mozyr program tested in metal and fire a principle that today he regains weight: a cheap, local active silo defense, with simple physics and brutal fire density, which does not prevent the enemy’s arrival, but can deny his finish at the decisive point. On a planet that reenters the logic of nuclear parity and multiplication of systems that until recently seemed a preserve of science fictionthe Soviet notion (if reengineer for the 21st century) once again sounds less like a relic and more like a dress rehearsal for a plausible future. Image | MichaelINC In Xataka | Russia is beginning to run out of the weapons it inherited from the USSR. So it’s pulling North Korea’s In Xataka | In the Cold War, Norway devised a plan underground to stop the Soviets. The invasion of Ukraine has reactivated it

The buzzword in the world of sports and weight loss is “autophagy.” Sounds good, the only problem is that it’s bullshit

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On December 7, 2016, Yoshinori Ohsumi He stood on the stage of the Medical Classroom of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and began to explainin detail, “the discoveries of the mechanisms of autophagy.” Three days later, in front of a completely packed auditorium, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Now, dozens of people are dedicated to using these mechanisms to lose weight. Isn’t it a beautiful example of the value of basic science? It would be, in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s all a hoax. Autophagy exists. Of course yes: as I say, the 2016 Nobel Prize went to its discoverer. It is a cellular mechanism that recycles damaged components. We know that when nutrients are lacking or there is stress, the cell wraps parts of itself (damaged proteins, old organelles like mitochondria) in double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes, which fuse with lysosomes to degrade and reuse those components. It is something essential in cellular life. Basic, essential: essential to preserve the functionality of tissues throughout life. This maintains internal well-being, obtains extra energy or materials and contributes to cellular defense. It reaches such a point that a few days ago, the journal Nature Immunology explained in detail how all this is a fundamental piece in longevity. What’s the problem then? Measuring its effect on humans is complex. After all, direct markers They are difficult to grasp outside of biopsies or highly controlled laboratory conditions. Indirect markers abound, yes; but they are not very specific. This makes us know that prolonged fasting activates the mechanisms of autophagy, yes; but we don’t know anything about anything like intermittent fasting or any type of diet doing that. In fact, even when we can see increases in autophagy gene expression, we cannot make the leap to clinical benefits. So… Can it be used, then, to lose weight? Well no. The truth is that selling it as a “trick” to lose weight is going too far: weight is lost due to a caloric deficit, not by “eating yourself.” Ultimately, all the examples given are nothing more than the extrapolation of isolated cellular models. There is no no kind of scientific evidence that endorses any of that. The only thing we know about autophagy at a clinical level is that, well, it sounds good: it sells. And, really, that’s enough. Saving the distance, ‘autophagy’ is the new ‘quantum diet’: something that sounds scientific, that has the endorsement of the community of experts and that means absolutely nothing. A perfect breeding ground for charlatans. Is it a scam then? I wouldn’t say that much. What’s more, we may find out in the next few years that autophagy mechanisms do indeed do things in normal diets. The important thing is that, along the way, all those who want to take advantage do not destroy the credit that Oshumi achieved with his revolutionary work. Image | Marco Vitiello In Xataka | The lies of the nutritional pyramid: from pedagogical tool to corporate battleground

Having many children sounds great as a way to preserve the species. Until you start passing genetic mutations

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Men do not have a limit marked by nature in which a ‘stop’ is applied when it comes to having more offspring (such as if women have), although little by little it is becoming more complicated. But even if there is no such limit choosing to become parents at an older ageis not the most recommended due to the great risks it has, as pointed out a published study in Nature magazine recently. Risk age. The idea that the age of the mother It is a crucial factor for the baby’s health is deeply rooted in the collective consciousness and has been seen to Older age is associated with diseases such as Down syndrome. However, science has been accumulating evidence for years that the father’s age also plays a fundamental role. We already knew that about 80% of new genetic mutations (those not inherited from either parent) come from the paternal germline. What we didn’t know was the magnitude of the mechanism that accelerates it. Selfish sperm. The team of researchers from Wellcome Sanger Institute in the United Kingdomled by Raheleh Rahbari and Matthew Neville, has put a name and surname to the problem: selfish selection of spermatogonia. In simple terms, this means that certain genetic mutations not only alter a gene, but give a competitive advantage to the stem cells that produce sperm (spermatogonia). These mutated cells replicate faster and more efficiently than their healthy counterparts, so they will predominate ahead of the gametes that are suitable. As a result, as the years go by, the percentage of sperm carrying these “selfish” mutations increases exponentially, not linearly, and this results in a man in his early thirties having 1 sperm in every 50 with a disease-causing mutation. But when you reach the age of 70, this figure shoots up to 1 sperm in every 20. How it has been seen. To reach this conclusion, scientists needed highly precise technology, since right now standard sequencing methods have an error rate that can make it difficult to see a specific mutation. This is where a technique called duplex sequencing (NanoSeq). Its operation is very simple, since instead of reading a single strand of DNA, this method reads both strands of the double helix. If a mutation is detected on both strands in exactly the same place, it is virtually impossible for it to be a machine error. It is a real mutation. Thanks to this precision, they were able to analyze more than 35,000 mutations in the sperm of 81 men between 24 and 75 years old. In this case, the results identified more than 40 key genes where these selfish mutations tend to occur. Most are associated with serious neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism itself or even increasing the probability of suffering from cancer throughout the offspring’s life. Genetic sanctuary. Interestingly, the study revealed a surprising fact when comparing the mutations in the sperm with those in the blood cells of the same men. In the blood, the impact of lifestyle was evident: men who smoked, drank alcohol excessively or were obese had a much higher mutation burden. However, no correlation with these factors was found in sperm. The mutations accumulated at a rate eight times slower and seemed immune to the individual’s habits. This suggests that the testicles function as a biological “sanctuary,” a protected niche that the body strives to keep safe from harmful environmental factors. Family planning. Logically, when making the decision to reproduce this changes many things, since to avoid this accumulation of mutations it would be interesting to do it the younger the better. Both in the case of men and women. But the reality we have in our society is that family conciliation has not yet been achieved, and this means that becoming mothers and fathers has to be delayed. In this way, the study points to the possibility of including sperm freezing at an earlier age if considering having children or considering genetic screening techniques for elderly parents. Although all this has a cost behind it. In Xataka | Someone thinks they know why fertility is plummeting around the world: men and women are doing “better” separately

A future where we all wear smart glasses sounds good, until they are taken by the person who is going to shave the crotch

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You meet in a beauty salon to make Brazilian hair removal and receive a very kind girl. Everything is going well until, in the middle of the work, you realize that it wears a goal, smart glasses capable of recording video. It is what happened to an influencer and his experience opens a new debate about privacy. What happened. The protagonist is Aniesta Navarro, a New York influencer who went to a beauty hall to be made by Brazilian hair removal (for whom he does not know, it consists of the elimination of the hair from the pubic area). Navarro told his experience in Tiktok and The video It already has more than seven million visualizations. In him he tells that the girl who attended her wore target glasses. When asked, the girl assured her that she used them as her graduated glasses and that at that time they were not loaded. The answer. The finish lines have a LED that lights up when they record and was off, but Navarro could not stop thinking if I would be recording, making the experience very uncomfortable. Days later he published Another video In Tiktok where he told that he had sent an email to the company and answered him with a generic message that did not give him too much confidence. As the story went viral, in response to the Washington Posta company spokeswoman insisted that the glasses were turned off. In addition, another Meta spokesman confirmed that manipulating the recording LED goes against service standards. Glasses for all. Mark Zuckerberg says that by 2030 the smartphone will have passed to the background because We will do almost everything through glasses. Although for now it is an emerging product may be right: the market is growing very fast and The success of the Ray-Ban Meta It is promising. What he does not say is what will mean from the point of view of privacy and if we are prepared as a society so that anyone who crosses wearing a camera in the eyes. Cameras everywhere. There are already, but we talk about glasses with a tiny camera that goes unnoticed. Yes, there is a LED that turns on when you record and cannot be deactivated, but there are already those who have found a way to hide it. Even if the LED works, many people do not realize that they are being recorded, as counted This journalist in The Times. It probably has to do with the fact that they are still a new product and is not normalized, but there are those who find it Intrusive and even sinister. More incidents. The Brazilian hair removal has not been the only incident with smart glasses. They count on Futurism That last year an exotic dancer warned about customers who used the Ray-Ban Meta to record the shows. A goalkeeper of a similar club published This video in which he denied the entrance to another client who also carried them. We don’t have to go so far: a few months ago They arrested a man in Barcelona for recording women without their consent using a goal. Image | Xataka In Xataka | They modify a goal scratch to identify strangers on the street. It is a warning of the dangerous ‘doxing’ that awaits us

Having an AI browser that does things for you sounds good. Until a hacker uses it to steal all your money

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Ask the AI ​​to make a summary of that article that you just saw in Reddit can be very expensive. It is what They just revealed Those responsible for Brave, who have discovered a surprisingly simple way to hack the browser of the perplexity comet to do not only what the user asks, but what an attacker has managed to convince him to do. The danger of leaving everything in the hands of AI is evident. What happened. Brave’s experts, a browser that competes with Chrome or Firefox and also has AI functions, wanted to analyze the risk of using an agetic browser like the one It offers perplexity right now with Comet. And what if they have done it. The browsers with ia promise a lot. Thanks to tools like Comet – Openai too has its chatgpt agentheir of Operator-, It is possible that the browser becomes a kind of digital butler and do things for us autonomously when visiting websites. Thus, you can summarize a news, tell you which song appears in that YouTube video, look for offers, answer emails or complete purchase processes. A priori the advantages are huge, but be careful, because there are also important risks. But be careful to let go of the steering wheel. However, delegating everything in the browser can raise a real threat to the safety and privacy of our data. If we trust them too much, these browsers may have access to all our data, since theoretically they will benefit from access to our email, but also to banking and financial data and even health. What happens if the amazing model or makes mistakes? Or worse: What happens if someone modifies the content in a malicious and invisible way for ia agents to follow malicious instructions? Having the AI. That is just what They discovered in Brave When trying a simple technique. They published a malicious comment on a Reddit thread, and then asked Comet to summarize the article. When they went to do it they verified how Comet did not know whether the content of that thread could or not contain malicious instructions: he simply met them and followed them. And in thread, as can be seen in the video, there were some simple instructions that stole the credentials of their perplexity account and even intercepted the verification code that the platform sent to the user to log in the service. Result: Automatic account by the attacker thanks to the AI. How the attack works. As Brave experts explain, the problem is that the way of hacking this type of browse is not hacking the browsers, but hacking the content, something that is very, very simple. The steps are the following: Configuration: An attack writes Malicious instructions in some content on the web. If you control that site, you can hide instructions using blank text if the background is also white, or in comments or other invisible elements. They can also do it directly “injecting” those instructions through comments in publications on social networks such as Reddit or Facebook. Activation: A user sails to that website and uses the browser with AI. If you do something simple as “Summarize this page“Or ask that certain information be extracted, these malicious instructions are activated. Injection: As the AI ​​processes the information on the page, see those malicious instructions and follow them. It is not able to distinguish whether the content has a malicious purpose or not, and considers everything as part of what you should do at the request of the user. Exploitation: these malicious commands and instructions indicate to the navigator’s tools to perform various actions, such as navigating the user’s bank account, Extract stored passwords In the browser or collect information to a remote server controlled by the attacker. Possible solutions. Those responsible for the study indicate that to protect themselves from these types of problems, agricultural browsers must first differentiate between what the user has asked for and what the user content is. The content of a website “should always be treated as non -reliable.” In addition, the browser with AI should necessarily ask for the user’s interaction to perform certain actions, how to access passwords or perhaps send an email. Restrict permissions to the agetic browser and make good use of Two -step verification systems “With mobile applications such as Google Authenticator, for example,” are also adequate ways to mitigate a problem that can put in many problems the deployment of these tools. Outstanding image | Perplexity, Xataka with mockuuups studio In Xataka | I have tried day, the browser that replaces ARC and bets everything to AI. It hasn’t come out as expected

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