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In 1971, an aquarium in the United States took in an orphaned seal. Five years later he started doing something: speaking in English

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When you go to an aquarium you expect to find ponds full of picturesque fish, seahorses, jellyfish, dolphins, sharks… Maybe, with luck and depending on where the enclosure is and how big it is, the occasional penguin. Those who went in the 80s to the New England Aquarium from Boston, in the United States, are looking for something different: a English speaking seal. And not. There are no quotes or italics here. Hoover (that was the name of the pinniped) spoke with all the law and in a way so clear that still fascinates today to the experts. Yes indeed, his voice It was not the most harmonious in the world. A talking seal? Exact. Seal and chatterbox are not two words that usually go together. But that is precisely why Hoover aroused so much interest in his day. And that is why even today, 41 years after his death, continues starring reports. Before getting into the subject, it is worth introducing the protagonist. Hoover was a male harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) that a fisherman rescued as a hatchling in the waters of Cumberland County, Maine, and spent most of its life at the New England Aquarium. His story would not be of much interest if it were not for the fact that around 1976, when he was around five years old, the animal began to do something unusual: speak broken English. How is that possible? To understand this, you have to take another leap back in time and go back to May 1971, when George Swallow, a Maine fisherman, did something unconventional: he brought home a baby seal. In theory it was not a whim or an eccentric raving. The poor animal had lost its mother, so Swallow decided to welcome her: He hand-fed her, played with her and (in short) took care of her as if she were a dog. He even gave him a name: Hoover. The problem is that as the seal grew it needed more and more fish, which made it unfeasible for it to continue with the Swallow family. His destination was the New England Aquarium, where he arrived when he was three months old. What did that seal say? Hoover’s life was relatively normal until the mid-1970s. When he was around five years old, the aquarium keepers realized something: the seal was making sounds similar to human speech. “The vocalizations were common especially during the mating season and often seemed intended for females, suggesting that they could have acted as ‘mating songs’, similar to those produced by male harbor seals,” a group of psycholinguists and behavioral biology experts recalled in 2023. a paper published in Current Biology. That observation is interesting. The aquarium staff did not teach Hoover to speak. They also didn’t train her to imitate sounds. It is assumed that what the animal learned about human vocalization was assimilated when it was a baby and lived with the Swallows. Some versions They claim that when the family gave her to the aquarium they had already heard her ‘talk’, but experts usually place her first ‘words’ at the age of five, when she reached sexual maturity. And what exactly did it say? That’s the most surprising thing. As remember From the aquarium itself, Hoover was able to pronounce words like “hello”, “let’s go” or “hey”, all in English. The Guenther Speech Neuroscience Lab even notes that he uttered entire phrases that he probably heard at the Swallow home, such as “Hoover get over here! Come on, come on“. As if that were not surprising, there is one more fact: they say he spoke with a Maine accent. The best thing is that you don’t have to imagine it. Although they are not particularly sharp, we preserve some recordings with Hoover’s chatter. Was he really talking? Often the best way to hear something is to (simply) want to hear it. This has led us, for example, to identify words like “mom” in dog growls either cat meows. In the case of Hoover, Diandra Duengen and the rest of the researchers who sign the article of Current Biology They believe that we are facing something different. It’s not that the seal made a confused sound reminiscent of expressions like “Hello there”, “hurry”, “hey, hey” either “come over here”. No. Everything indicates that it is a deliberate imitation. “Human perception is so fine-tuned to finding speech patterns that some animals can trick our brains into making us hear speech sounds where no such similarity exists,” they explain. “In Hoover’s case there is strong evidence of speech imitation. Spectrograms of his sounds show that his vocalizations were, in fact, very ‘human’, containing the typical formant modulations we use to produce vowels and consonants.” Was it expressed then? No. And yes. Duengen and his companions remember that there is analysis to suggest that Hoover produced sounds similar to English vowels, making it a fascinating case of “learning human speech vocal production in a mammal.” They also believe that the seal could have used this ability as “mating songs”, something that other male seals do. What we cannot say is that Hoover ‘understood’ what he was saying, something that is not necessary for speech imitation in any case. “Comprehension or intention of meaning is not relevant to the learning of vocal production. Neither Hoover nor most other animals that exhibit this learning seem to ‘understand’ spoken language or the meaning of words. However, vocal imitation is impressive in itself and represents a fundamental component of speech,” they point out the experts. That Hoover did not begin to produce sounds until his sexual maturity, even when it came to words that he theoretically learned when he was a child, is also not exceptional. Something similar happens with some birds with the same capacity. Is it just a curiosity? No. In his day Hoover appeared on ‘Good Morning America’ and monopolized reports in Reader’s Digest either The New Yorkeramong many other media. Beyond the picturesque nature of his case, … Read more

In the midst of a heat wave, Europe has started buying air conditioners in droves. And China can’t cope

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I don’t know anyone who likes air conditioning, especially for sleeping. However, when the heat hits, it is impossible to spend the days indoors. if we don’t have the device on. The problem is that I am speaking from the position of a Spaniard who lives in La Mancha, where air conditioners practically come with houses. Further north or in the rest of Europe, directly, the air conditioning with 20% penetration in houses, it is a mythological animal. It was, rather. With the current heat wavecountries like France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have started buying air conditioning units like crazy only to find themselves with a problem: China is the main supplier and the manufacturers cannot cope. And I’m not going to say that air conditioners now are geopolitics, but a little… yes. Let’s see it. It’s hot and there is no solution. Two weeks ago I was at Vivatech, in Paris, and this past weekend in London and Liverpool. At 29º, the Apple Watch showed me that in Paris They were on orange alert by heat. 29º in my land is a slightly hot spring day (unfortunately). In the United Kingdom, however, things changed and it wasn’t just incredibly hot: when you entered an establishment it was even worse. Not only do they not have air conditioners because they have not needed them, but have built so that the houses retain heat. A taxi driver told me that the best time of day is when he is working because his house is a sauna, and it makes perfect sense. Spain and France are two of the most affected countriesbut northern Italy, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Germany and the aforementioned United Kingdom are also suffering the consequences. And the problem is no longer that it is hot, but that mortality due to heat has skyrocketed in recent weeks. The solution? The north of Spain and European countries have started buying air conditioning units like crazy, but there is a problem. Exhausted. The middle SCMP He has a representative in Paris and tells how, a few days ago, he approached several businesses to try to get an air conditioner. The answer that he found in several of them, and that some friends reported to him, is that everything was sold. The scene is like something out of an apocalyptic movie, with stores with shelves full of everything except the air conditioning section, which is empty. He started looking at online stores, such as a German website designed so that people can find specific models of these devices and, after searching 1,176 stores, the model he wanted was only in one of them. In these countries where air conditioning is not normal, people go out to cool off in fountains and rivers, and even French President Emmanuel Macron has addressed the population pointing out that it is impossible for them to adapt “to a peak that has no equivalent anywhere in Europe today and that has never had an equivalent in our history.” Perhaps he has become a little heated with that statement, but it reflects that the situation is becoming unsustainable. And you would think that the solution is to start importing more, right? The problem is that it is not that simple. Bottleneck in production. China, as with other everyday devices, is the main manufacturer of air conditioners. Brands such as Haier, Gree, Hisense or Midea are some of those that lead the market, even creating models adapted to European regulations in certain countries (such as the Midea PortaSplit for windows, which makes little noise and has a very low refrigerant charge, ideal for Germany). There are others like Xiaomi (whose model we analyzed last year and a year later I confirm that it is still going great), Dreo with its fans or Dreame that are starting to bring their models to Europe because they have seen that they definitely have a pull. Only in May, esteem that China exported air conditioners worth $3.33 million to France, $2.82 million to Germany and a whopping $7.69 million to the Netherlands. It implies an increase of 186.2%, 69.6% and 139.1% respectively compared to the previous year. This percentage in France is explained if we take into account that, according to French data, only between 18% and 26% of homes had air conditioning until then. Also in logistics. Another problem is that these brands mentioned do not manufacture only for themselves, but for other manufacturers that sell OEM equipment, which implies that the factories are full. It is estimated that China accounts for 40% of global air conditioning exports and, to meet that demand, some manufacturers have begun to work day and night to satisfy European demand. “China cannot ship air conditioners fast enough to meet European demand” They are prioritizing more portable models and split for Europe because they have seen a huge market, but they cannot multiply production indefinitely without incurring overcapacity the rest of the year. Giants like Cainiao, AliExpress or Joybuy they are meeting with a brutal bottleneck because, although they have had units in advance trying to tackle this summer’s situation, they have simply… flown out of European warehouses. And in the installation. Faced with this situation, and seeing that heat waves are increasingly common, Europe estimated in 2024 that expected 70 million AC devices to be installed by 2030. This would mean covering 35% of European homes, but if all these factors were not already a salad of problems full of ingredients, two more are added. The first, the regulation of each city. In Spain we are used to seeing the typical indoor split unit with a compressor hanging from the façade, but there are important heritage restrictions in historic centers that allow drilling into walls or altering the aesthetics of buildings. In neighborhood communities you must ask for permission, there are fines for installation on facades without authorization (in Italy, for example) and the price of electricity doesn’t help … Read more

In the midst of an extreme heat wave, the French have started painting their windows with white chalk. It makes perfect sense

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Yes, we are in 2026. Yes, there are air conditioners, very effective fansair conditioners and even paintings ultra-white (literally) with such a reflective capacity that they help refresh the surfaces on which they are applied. And yet, despite all that, in France there are people who are opting for a very simple method to withstand the heat: painting their windows with chalk. So much so that the demand for blanc de Meudona calcareous clay extracted from the quarries of Meudon, near Paris, has been shot in hardware stores. Looking for solutions at 40ºC. In the middle of the heatwave and with the Paris thermometers fooling around with 40ºCthe logical thing is that people start buying air conditioners, fans, fans and ice bags. In France, however, there is another item that has been as or even more in demand these days: the blanc de Meudona white powder made up mostly of calcium carbonate. The new toilet paper. It is so requested that a few days ago Le Parisian dedicated an extensive report in which he explains that there are craft stores that are depleting their supplies of blanc de Meudon and businesses that have run out of stock. Even people who order it online receive it late. “My wife went to all the DIY stores in Auray and couldn’t find it,” confess to Western France Philippe, a Frenchman who had no choice but to go to another town to buy white chalk. There are those who already compare their compulsive purchasing with what they experienced with toilet paper during the pandemic. @daphneblt I have tested the astuce of the blanc de Meudon 🕵🏼‍♀️🥵 Comme vous j’ai vu passer cette astuce partout sur mon fil d’actualité, although je n’arrivais pas à en trouver, tous les magasins étaient en rupture de stock 🫠 Le dosage : 1 dose of pour + 1 dose of water and form a small liquid to apply on the fenêtres to reflect the light (in théorie) ☀️ And the white of Meudon c’est de la craie donc réduire en poudre des craies ou bien utiliser de la poudre d’argile blanche c’est la même chose 👀 Mon verdict: c’est mieux que rien et je suis passée de 36/37 à 35 degrés dans mon appartement parisien sous les toits (cc Yann Barthès 🤠) orienté sud 🤔 Bon c’est mieux que rien, évidemment si vous avez des recos je suis preneuse, parler de l’aluminium qui apparemment colle aux vitres et de la couverture de survie qui visibly réchauffe les voisins d’en face 😭 Bon courage à tous et allez voter en 2027, vu l’état currentuel des choses c’est le geste avec le plus d’impact qu’on puisse faire (avec le fait de manger moins de viande 🥩) ✨🗳️ One of my first thoughts to Bernard Arnault who probably passed all the same since we are on a yacht, on a private jet, in a climatized villa or on a private island. ☠️ #responsibleconsommation #consommermieux #cunning #blancdemeudon #ecoresponsible ♬ are original – daphneblt Why’s that? He blanc de Meudon It is not a new product. On the contrary. It has always been marketed, although it is normally used in houseworksuch as cleaning cutlery or marble. Also it’s usual that merchants use it to cover their store windows during renovations. Basically the blanc de Meudon It is a calcareous material that is mixed with water to form a whitish paste with a milky texture. These two peculiarities (composition and color) have made it a popular and cheap resource to cool homes in the heat of the heat. It is not a new remedy, but in the last month it has gained followers thanks to articles and videos that sell their supposed benefits. Of course, the method is simple: the clay is mixed with water until it forms a paste and then, with the help of a brush, it is spread directly on the windows. The result is not what is called aesthetic, but its defenders say that it helps to refresh the houses. A couple of degrees less. In reality, there is little surprising about it. White surfaces are known to reflect sunlight and heat. In fact, commercial paints can cool at 1.7ºC the opposite side of the surface on which they are applied and there are researchers working on ‘ultra-white’ versions able to reflect 98% of social radiation. Some studies claim that, with an appropriate combination, daytime temperature could be reduced in more than 7.5º. @abou.addict J’ai testedé un truc à 3€ contre la chaleur, maintenant c’est en rupture partout.. Une astuce simple et qui marche partout: dès que tu as une fenêtre exposée plein sud que tu ne peux pas protéger avec des volets ou un store, le blanc de Meudon fait office de bouclier anti-chaleur. On dilute, on apply on the glass, and the remaining piece beaucoup plus fraîche. Ça marche also bien dans une école, une mairie, un bureau ou chez soi: partout où il ya du vitrage qui prend le soleil toute la journée et qu’on ne peut pas équiper autrement. On availability I posted this astuce l’an dernier et elle a fait plus de 600 000 vues, donc on la repartage avant la prochaine vague de chaleur (et pendant qu’on en trouve encore, parce que ça part en rupture de stock). #canicule #cunning blancdemeudon maisonfraîche #fraicheur ♬ âm thanh gốc – Coach sportif – Coach sportif “An excellent option”. Added to these advantages are those offered by calcium carbonate. “Chalk is primarily composed of CaCO3. It absorbs very little sunlight, even in the visible range, which gives it its white color. Additionally, it does not absorb UV radiation and very little near-infrared light, making it an excellent choice,” comment Xiangyu Li, Purdue researcher, told the BBC. On the France3 channel they assure that only covering the windows with blanc de Meudon can be earned between two and three degrees of indoor comfort. It is not the same as an air conditioner, although it is also much cheaper. … Read more

Someone has created a PS1 programming environment with Claude. And he has started programming games

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Manny has been wanting this software to exist for 20 years. Security engineer by day, indie developer by night, he grew up with a PlayStation and never stopped thinking about making games for it. When he finally got around to trying, the barrier wasn’t the complexity of the hardware: it was that the tools available were in C++ and getting them started was too difficult. Their solution was the most radical possible: build the tools from scratch. Have your own emulator. The result is called PSoXide. According to describes Manny himselfis a complete development stack for PS1 written entirely in Rust: emulator, SDK, engine, level editor and pipeline disk. And Claude is built into the emulator as part of the architecture. “This would have been completely impossible without the LLMs,” says Manny, and it is not an exaggeration: PSoXide is a highly complex project, which would have required a team behind it, but which he has been able to emulate on his own thanks to AI. How it works. The emulator implements the complete machine: the R3000A CPU, the GPU, the GTE, the CD-ROM, the DMA, the SPU, the timers and the MDEC. As detailed in the Project READMEManny built a suite of tests with more than 65 ROMs, and then made a test CD to run it on a real PS1 and be able to check if the emulator was imitating the original machine one hundred percent. The SDK, in short, is very complete: it communicates directly with the hardware instead of going through the console’s BIOS for performance reasons. And it has dedicated modules for GPU, GTE, controllers, SPU audio with ADPCM, CD-ROM and ISO9660. And memory cards, of course. Without Claude it can’t be done. Manny says the part he’s most excited about about the editor is that it “wires the emulator directly to Claude”: there’s an MCP server that exposes about 25 endpoints of debugso the model can inspect the state of the CPU, VRAM, and registers as they work. “Debugging a PS1 game by simply asking Claude to inspect the hardware is like a wet dream,” he says. When something goes wrong in a game’s behavior, Manny can ask Claude to directly read the logs from the emulated hardware and diagnose what’s going on. That design is a direct consequence of how the project uses AI: PSoXide was developed “with substantial assistance from AI, with a human leading the architecture, the debugging and hardware verification.” That is, and this is also important and makes clear certain preconceptions about how AI can replace programmers: he directs, AI executes. Being “a software engineer in the pre-AI era means that in the long term I can guide the models in a way that the code remains stable and expandable.” Manny: Origins. According to your profile on itch.ioManny started programming with the PICO-8, whose limitations (small resolution, small cartridges) taught him what restriction can do for creativity. Then he built BONNIE-32its own console in Rust, with software renderer and integrated tools. In parallel, in February 2026, it published an experimental alpha version of a port of ‘Zelda: Ocarina of Time’…for PS1. He made it playable, with 3D movement and a camera controllable with the sticks, and conceived it as a learning tool for real hardware. The catalogue. The first game published on PSoXide is the ‘Celeste Classic Collection PSX‘: Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry’s two PICO-8 games ‘Celeste Classic’ and ‘Celeste 2: Lani’s Trek’, rewritten in Rust on the PSoXide SDK. Be careful, we are not looking at a PICO-8 emulator running on the PS1, but rather native code: an executable of approximately 468 KB, graphics with 4 bits per pixel textures, real-time synthesized audio with 8 voices… This beauty runs at 60 frames per second and is downloaded on itch.io at a free price. And after that, a much more ambitious project: Manny is working with a 3D artist on an original game for PS1, a souls-like with three-dimensional graphics for the console. Or as Manny says, “aimed at something you really care about, AI doesn’t replace your creativity, it unlocks it.” In Xataka | Claude Code is being the big favorite among programmers. So much so that he already signs 4% of everything that is uploaded to GitHub

A dating app has started giving it away so its users can meet in person

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Dating apps are on the decline. After the pandemic boomapps like Tinder they have been losing users. It doesn’t help that the apps are plagued by bots and? we are increasingly lazy to flirtbut now there is a new problem: everything is so expensive that dating has become a luxury, especially for the youngest. In this context, an app has had a rather risky idea. The promotion. They tell it in Wired. There is a dating app that is raffling off cards worth $500 in gas for those who download the app and tag three friends. Their slogan is: “Dating shouldn’t have to compete with the price of filling up with gas.” The app in question is BLK, a dating app for black people that was launched in the US, although it has expanded to other countries such as the United Kingdom. BLK belongs to Match Group, where we also find other apps like Tinder or Hinge, and was born as a response to the racism and prejudice that black people suffer when using these types of apps. The price of gasoline. The price of gasoline in the US, where they launched this campaign, reached a peak last Memorial Day, according to AAA data. A gallon reached $4.56, an increase of $1.30 compared to the same period last year. If we convert it to liters it is around 1.22 dollars, which may not seem like much. looking at the prices we manage on this side of the Atlanticbut it is the highest price in the US in the last four years. The reason is what we already know: the blockade of Hormuz due to the Iran war. And gasoline has not been the only thing that has risen, food and other prices are also rising. essential goods. Looking for a partner is expensive. According to a Montreal bank studythe cost of going on a date in the US and Canada has increased by 12.5% ​​in 2026. The average expense, including prior personal care and gasoline, is $189. This has caused the frequency of dating to decrease and almost half of singles (47%) consider that flirting is not worth it. Furthermore, 50% of Generation Z and 40% of millennials consider that the cost of dating significantly affects their finances and prevents them from achieving their financial goals. Quotes low-cost. The most traditional dating culture in the US is what is known as “wining and dining”, that is, going out to dinner and drinking in elegant places, with the aim of impressing the other person; This is why the cost of appointments is so high. Given this scenario, there are more and more people who are choosing to stop dating directly, but others opt for other types of cheapest plans like going on a picnic or going for a walk. Soft-socializing. That preference for cheaper plans fits into the fphenomenon of soft-socializing, which we could translate as “soft socialization” and which generation Z has made fashionable. It consists of meeting other people, but without the pressure of organizing something very intense or very expensive: for example, meeting at home to do a puzzle, participating in a book club or watching a movie together. For many young people, it is a way to continue socializing without assuming the costs of traditional leisure. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Goodbye Tinder, hello Strava: running clubs have become the favorite dating app of Generation Z

Adobe was not born with Photoshop. It started by solving a huge and inconspicuous problem: printing well

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Before becoming one of those companies that we almost automatically associate with digital creativity, Adobe had a much more specific and less brilliant obsession at first glance: printing. We are not talking about retouching photographs, editing videos or opening PDF documents with the naturalness with which we do it today, but rather about attacking a difficulty that is basic in appearance and enormous in practice. In the early years of personal computing, making what was seen or designed on a computer turned out well on paper It was not something guaranteed. Adobe’s story begins precisely at that point: with PostScripta language intended to describe how a printed page should look. The difficulty was that that chain was much more fragile than we can imagine today. Lemelson-MIT remembers that, at that time, personal computers were beginning to hit the market and the printers available were, in many cases, dot matrix, with very low quality results. For truly professional work, the alternative was composition equipment that could cost more than $150,000 at that time and required laborious processes. Between one extreme and the other there was an obvious gap: there was a lack of a more flexible, reliable and accessible way to bring complex pages to paper. The problem was not creating images, it was getting them to look the same on paper The next piece of history appears in the famous Xerox PARCwhere laser printing was already a laboratory reality, although still full of limits. Those early machines were controlled by Press, a protocol that worked well with simple letters and images, but got bogged down with demanding projects. A member of that team named John Warnock encountered the same message over and over again, “Too complex page“, and that was no small anecdote. His response was to think of an architecture capable of doing just the opposite: printing any page. That idea didn’t come from nowhere. Before coming to Xerox, Warnock had worked at Evans & Sutherland, where he was involved in a highly ambitious project for the New York Maritime Academy: a simulator of New York Harbor with computer-generated buildings, docks, buoys, changing weather and other ships. That system had to be built without yet knowing what specific hardware it would end up running on, so the team opted to create a language not tied to a specific machine. A decisive lesson emerged from this: device-independent software gave much more flexibility. John Warnock, left, and Charles Geschke, right, founders of Adobe With that learning behind him, Warnock once again encountered a similar problem at Xerox, but now fully applied to printing. The company used different schemes depending on the printer, to the point that its Star stations were under increasing load due to having to communicate with each model in a different way. Warnock and a group led by Charles Geschke They then worked at Interpressa standard, device-independent language for Xerox laser printers. The advance existed, but it collided with a business decision: Xerox adopted it internally and did not want to open it to the market. Apple LaserWriter The departure came in 1982, when Warnock and Geschke left Xerox PARC and founded Adobe. Lemelson-MIT says that its first idea was not exactly to become the software company that would end up marking desktop publishing, but rather to set up a printing service for companies and consumers. That plan changed when their financial advisors encouraged them to move toward software development. There PostScript began to take its decisive form: not as a closed solution for a single machine, but as a portable language that manufacturers could integrate into their own devices. One of the decisive pieces for that technology to jump from the laboratory to the market appeared in Apple. IEEE Spectrum explains that Steve Jobs had a very specific problem: The Macintosh was advancing, but without a quality printer it was difficult to enter the business world. Daisy printers didn’t work for Mac graphics and Apple didn’t arrive in time with a high-quality solution of its own. Adobe was building an answer. In late 1983, Adobe signed an agreement with Apple, and in January 1985, PostScript appeared for the first time on the Internet. LaserWriter. Seen from today, the interesting thing is that Adobe did not start with the most recognizable part of its current history, but with a layer that we almost always take for granted. Of course, Illustrator, Acrobat, Photoshop and Premiere are part of a later expansion, but the starting point was different: PostScript and the promise that text, images and graphics could reach paper with fidelity. There was the true initial intuition. Before becoming recognizable for its creative tools, Adobe found its place by solving a discreet but decisive task: that what was created could be printed well. Images | Adobe (1, 2) | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | In 1967, a war veteran believed that moving around a computer could be easier. So he created the first mouse

“My AMOS-6 scar started itching when I saw the New Glenn video”

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September 1, 2016. SpaceX is available to launch one of its Falcon 9 rockets, loaded with the AMOS-6 satellite. It was not a new procedure, but something went wrong and the rocket exploded on the launch pad, causing great damage to it. May 28, 2026. Blue Origin begins a static firing test of its New Glenn rocket, but it is not completed. The rocket explodesdestroying the launch pad in its wake. The similarity between both events shows us that catastrophic explosions occur even in the most million-dollar companies. But it also helps us make calculations about what the future of Jeff Bezos’ company could be. The leaders of this have assured that New Glenn will take flight before this year ends. However, comparisons with the SpaceX event show us that this is an overly optimistic calculation. Former SpaceX engineers say. In Ars Technica They have interviewed several former SpaceX engineers who were active when the 2016 incident occurred. When asked about the work that remains for Blue Origin, they all agree on the same thing. Repairing a launch pad is very complicated and, at best, could take about 12 months to do. More likely, they could extend up to 18 months. Without a launch platform you cannot launch a rocket, so doing so before the end of this year does not seem very likely. The case of SpaceX. “My AMOS-6 scar started itching when I saw the New Glenn video.” With that phrase, Hans Koenigsmann, who was then vice president of construction and flight reliability at SpaceX, expressed the great similarity between that event and what happened to Blue Origin. In 2016 he led the investigation into the causes that led to the explosion. Therefore, you know very well that this is a slow process. They spent weeks searching for pieces of the rocket in the wetlands near Cape Canaveral. They also searched for fragments of the launch pad. They even used drones and underwater robots to find as many of these pieces as possible. With all that, they were not able to access the launch pad for reconstruction until 4 months had passed. They were fortunate that they had another platform at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They just had to adapt it a little, but it was ready in 5 months. However, Blue Origin does not have alternatives. He has to rebuild the launch pad that has already been destroyed. The complexity of launch platforms. Former SpaceX engineers insist that launch pads are complex facilities. They have tall and resistant steel-based launching towers. They also include foundations heavily reinforced with concrete and trenches excavated under the platform to direct and evacuate the gases and flames generated during the launch so that a fire does not break out. In addition, there is a complex electrical system and pipes that flow from propellants to cooling liquids, through purge gases, water for deluge systems and much more. These pipes, in fact, are the most complicated to fix, according to former Space X engineer Trip Harriss. Repairing all of this takes a long time, which also begins to count once it has been determined what happened during the incident. The role of NASA. In his statements to Ars TechnicaKoenigsmann has urged Blue Origin to be transparent with NASA at all times. It is not for less. The US space agency is playing a lot with what happened. The two companies that will bear the burden of the moon landing during the Artemis missions will be SpaceX and Blue Origin. The latter’s lander, Blue Moon, is advancing at a good pace. However, without a rocket New Glenn cannot be carried to its destination. For this reason, NASA has asked Jeff Bezos’ company for explanations from the first moment. However, also have assured that they will support and help the company in everything that is necessary and that, for the moment, They are not looking for alternatives. They are confident that New Glenn will arrive on time. The positive part. For John Muratore, the former NASA engineer who was going to direct the launch of the Falcon 9 in 2016, everything that has happened to Blue Origin also has a positive side. They took advantage of their own incident to redesign their launch pad and introduce improvements that have served them well in subsequent releases. Therefore, Blue Origin must have hope. But also try to be more consistent with the dates. Experts do not seem to agree that it is feasible to launch in 2026. In any case, the rare company, private or public, actually launches when planned. Optimism can help them. Image | Blue Origin/SpaceX In Xataka | Texas has a new city. Until a few days ago, it was only the SpaceX base in Boca Chica

Japan has had enough of tourists littering the streets. So he has started to control them with police and fines

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No matter which guide you use, surely if you are looking for the iconic places in Japan, Shibuya, one of the districts, will be among them. more dynamic from Tokyo. The neighborhood is known for its neon lights, its skyline and (above all) its famous intersection. Shibuya sukuranburu kōsatenthrough which thousands of tourists pass every day. If you search on TikTok for #sibuyacrossing you will find more than 70,000 videosthe majority of foreigners. Local authorities have grown tired of these crowds leaving their streets. full of garbage and has decided cut to the chase. As? With special patrols and sanctions. What has happened? That the government of the Shibuya district, in Tokyo, wants to get rid of people who throw garbage in its streets. And he has decided to do it the most effective way (and emphatically) possible: using the police and with sanctions that will be imposed on the spot and offenders must pay either in cash, with a credit card or by means of a QR code. It is not a more or less diffuse idea or a political proposal that still needs to be debated and processed. The measure has already been introduced as an amendment in the ordinance for the ‘Joint Creation of a Clean Shibuya’, a rule from 1997. Now, and after a grace period that began in April, the authorities have begun to issue fines. They have even promoted a campaign with a name that leaves little room for interpretation: “If you throw garbage, you lose money”. Proof of how seriously the police take it is that only on their first day did they process a dozen of sanctions. What fines and how are they applied? The fines amount to 2,000 yenabout 10.7 euros, and will be applied immediately so that offenders can pay them in cash or by pulling a card. As if the threat of sanctions were not enough, the district has decided to mobilize a patrol of several dozen agents (up to 50) who will be in charge of exploring the area in search of offenders. As the objective is to eliminate dirt, the focus has not only been placed on pedestrians. The same rule contemplates fines of 50,000 yen (270 euros) for positions takeaway or vending machines that do not install trash cans nearby. Is the problem so serious? No data has been released on the amount of garbage that is collected every day on the streets of Shibuya, but there are several characteristics in the area that explain why the government has decided to resort to fines. The first is that public containers are not plentiful. In 2013 the authorities they withdrew bins and encouraged people to manage their waste responsibly. The idea was not only to avoid collapsed bins, but, as remember the BBCimprove security. In general, in the country it is not strange to find areas in which containers are scarce for fear that they will be used in terrorist attacks. This lack of buckets has not gone unnoticed by the millions of tourists who visit the country each year. In 2025 the issue appeared in a government survey on the problems faced by foreign tourists. He was cited by 20% of the respondents. Is it the only explanation? No. Shibuya is an important (and above all busy) tourist hub. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), during peak hours between 1,000 and 2,500 People cross its famous intersection every two minutes. “It is one of the most emblematic places in Tokyo,” the agency points out before remembering that just with the number of people who accumulate there, including residents and visitors, a stadium could be filled in a short time. Although slightly less than 250,000 peoplethis avalanche of passers-by is much better understood if we take into account that Japan has been experiencing an authentic tourist boom. It is estimated that only last year they visited the country 42.7 million of foreigners, a relevant figure for three reasons: it represents a year-on-year increase of almost 16%, it is the first time that the figure exceeds 40 million and, above all, it marks a historical record. Fines only for tourists? No. Fines for littering the ground apply to both visitors and local people, although it is not unreasonable to think that the measure has been adopted largely with foreigners in mind. And not only because it is centered on a tourist hub. The sanctions are immediate, they can be paid with a card or a QR and the agents in charge of enforcing the rule will speak several languagesincluding English, Chinese and Korean. “Shibuya is an international area visited by many Japanese and people from all over the world. We ask all visitors, regardless of nationality, to respect the city’s rules,” underlines Ken Hasebe, district leader. The authorities conduct a survey, carried out last year, which shows that 52% of the people hunted for littering were foreigners. Does it only happen there? No. Shibuya is not the only point in Japan where the tourist avalanche has generated tensions with the local population. In fact, you don’t have to go back very far in time to find two other towns that also decided to adopt measures to avoid the overcrowding, dirt and traffic problems generated by tourism. One is Fujikawaguchiko, which in 2024 installed a barrier to cover your views of Mount Fuji. The reason? The hordes of tourists seeking selfie perfect. The other is Fujiyoshida, who recently canceled their festival of the cherry blossom to save the neighbors the inconvenience caused by the thousands of foreigners that the event attracts. The country even has decided to charge for the ascent of Fuji to prevent it from becoming a huge public landfill. Images |Timo Volz (Unsplash) and Jezael Melgoza (Unsplash) In Xataka | Antarctica was practically the last corner of the Earth immune to touristification. That’s ending

Smart glasses for police seemed like science fiction. Some Chinese agents have already started using them

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The image is powerful because it is easy to visualize: a police officer walks down a street in Tianjin, looks around, and connected glasses return useful information in real time. What until not so long ago could have sounded like science fiction is beginning to have much more earthly applications, from ordering traffic to helping locate a lost person. In this city in northern China, according to China Dailytechnology is already part of some police tasks. And that’s the interesting thing: we are not just talking about a futuristic promise, but about a use that is beginning to hit the streets. Smart glasses for police. The key is that we are not just talking about glasses placed on an agent’s face, but about a system designed to be integrated into police routine. They are officially presented as a development of the local public security system, with national software and hardware, and places them in three areas of use: traffic, patrols and urban management. It is a very immediate effectiveness-oriented approach. An invisible screen for the agent. The device works as a layer of information added to police work. It can recognize text, interpret voice commands and provide responses from a connected platform, with the camera as an entry point to identify elements of the environment. In practice, this allows identity checks to be carried out or information associated with a person to be searched without leaving the scene. The source presents it as a responsive improvement, although such a tool also opens up obvious questions about surveillance and privacy. The glasses on the ground. Zhao Baoxin, an officer at the Jiefang Road police station in Heping district, told the aforementioned media that during a patrol they found an elderly man at an intersection who could not express himself clearly or indicate his name or address. According to his version, the glasses made it possible to quickly identify him and, in about 20 minutes, contact his family so he could return home. Traffic as a daily test. Another of the uses described brings the technology down to a very recognizable scene: the entrance and exit of a school. In that case, parents can pre-register their license plates through a mini-program developed with the participation of the public security system, and that information is linked to the platform consulted by the glasses. Thus, agents identify authorized vehicles, order short stops and divert other cars during peak congestion hours. It is efficient on paper, but it also normalizes automated license plate reading. What the numbers say. Sun Yinghua, agent in the science, technology and IT area of ​​the Municipal Public Security Bureau, places the recognition accuracy above 95% and speaks of results in milliseconds. They also explain that the design also seeks comfort: they weigh about 40 grams and offer a first-person perspective that avoids the framing changes typical of a body camera when the agent leans or turns. The autonomy, however, is 1.5 or 2 hours of continuous use. It hasn’t come out of nowhere. Police glasses with facial recognition had already appeared in China years ago. In 2018, SCMP counted that were being used at Zhengzhou East station during Chunyun, the huge Lunar New Year travel period, to locate fugitives and detect cases of identity fraud. What we see now seems less like a one-off test and more like a piece within an ecosystem: China Daily cites uses in different areas of the country, coordination with drones in large operations and plans to connect the glasses with robotic dogs, intelligent police vehicles, humanoid robots and other terminals. Efficiency gains ground, but so do questions about surveillance. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | The metaverse wasn’t dead, it was on a spree. And Meta wants it to flood Instagram and Facebook

‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ has started off on the wrong foot

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Seven years after ‘The Rise of Skywalker‘, ‘Star Wars‘ returns to theaters with ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, the first film in the franchise since 2019. The reception of the first critics and even the first screenings for fans is being, at best, very lukewarm. Right now, Disney needs a smash hit to revitalize the franchise, and early viewers seem to be simply shrugging their shoulders. Lazy notes. With nearly 120 reviews counted before its May 22 premiere, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ it stands at around 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. That score places it in the same range as ‘Attack of the Clones’ (62%), although still above what is considered the great fiascos of the franchise: ‘The Phantom Menace’ from the prequel trilogy and ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ from the Disney era. Of course, as always on Rotten Tomatoes, opinions are debatable, but it is significant that a film that was going to function as a oxygen tank for the franchise has such a lukewarm reception. What do they say? All the reviews agree on common points: the film is entertaining, but it does not justify a return to the cinema of the saga. Or in other words: we are facing an extended episode of the series. There is talk of a nostalgic walkof the most boring installment of the franchisethat the film is essentially two episodes from the spliced ​​series. One of the most noted problems is that his commercial hook, Pedro Pascal, has ended up turning against the series: the Mandalorian never takes off his helmet, and most of the action scenes are performed by a stuntman. Why Disney needs the Mandalorian. Disney comes from a complicated 2025 at the box officewith the failures of ‘Snow White’ and ‘Elio’, and Marvel’s proposals (”Captain America: Brave New World’, ‘Thunderbolts’ and ‘Fantastic Four’) performing less than expected. According to experts, the excess of series and movies designed for Disney+ has eroded the cultural value of Marvel, Star Wars and Pixarwhich has led to falls such as loss of 700,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. Resurrect ‘Star Wars’. The strategy is now very clear: fewer films, more impact. Marvel’s imminent releases are the new Spider-Man movie (in co-production with Sony) and the long-awaited return of the Avengers. ‘Star Wars’ is betting on this ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ (2026) and ‘Starfighter’ (2027), starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy. For now, perhaps, the strategy has been frustrated (although the box office may respond as Disney hopes, in a new chapter of the renewed divorce between critics and public: After all, ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ grossed more than a billion; and there are cases of films like ‘The Last Jedi’, loved by critics, hated by fans). The key problem with ‘The Mandalorian’. When Grogu was still Baby Yodaconquered the internet at a very specific moment: with the inauguration of Disney+, in the days around the pandemic. But the phenomenon was not repeated neither in successive seasons nor in series like ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ or ‘Ahsoka’. The franchise has been trying to disassociate itself from the Skywalker family for years, and ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ could be a good solid step, although the film’s plot revolves around Jabba the Hutt’s son. That is, the surnames in the usual tiny galaxy. Another sign that the franchise does not know how to expand without resorting to the usual tropes. Given what we have seen, ‘Starfighter’ has an even more relevant challenge before it than performing at the box office. In Xataka | Disney needs to solve the biggest crisis in ‘Star Wars’ history. And he’s held on to Baby Yoda to get it

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