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Something unusual happened in Chernobyl when the Russian soldiers arrived. The cameras that monitored the animals have never stopped recording

July 12, 2026 by usatoday24

In April 1986, just a few days after the Chernobyl accidentSoviet scientists feared that radiation had turned the area into a biological desert for generations. Occurred exactly the opposite. With the disappearance of human activity, the forest recovered the lost ground and the exclusion zone ended up becoming one of the largest wildlife refuges in Europe. The animal cameras that recorded the war. I told it this week in a report The New York Times. When Ukrainian conservationist Svitlana Kudrenko installed dozens of camera traps throughout the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2020, her goal was much more routine: to study how populations of wolves, lynxes, deer, foxes and other species that had thrived after decades without human presence were evolving. Two years later, Russia invaded Ukraine and turned Chernobyl into an improvised military base. The soldiers arrived, the tanks went through the forests, the explosions began… and the cameras never stopped recording. An unprecedented experiment. The Russian occupation barely lasted a little more than a month, but it left behind a extraordinary scientific opportunity. Because the cameras continued to operate throughout the invasion, the researchers were able to compare the behavior of eleven species before, during and after the passage of the troops. In addition, they crossed these images with testimonies from people who remained in the area and with satellite data capable of detecting fires, building an almost real-time portrait of how fauna responds to a war. The uneven reaction of the animals. One of the most interesting findings was that did not exist a universal answer. Roe deer, especially shy animals linked to the forest, began to appear much less as the intensity of military activity increased. Red deer, on the other hand, were detected more frequently, probably because They fled from open areas where tanks, vehicles and explosions were concentrated, thus increasing the chances of being recorded by cameras. The war changed the forest’s schedules. The differences were not limited to the number of animals observed. red deer They modified their routines and they began to be more active during the day and less at night. Foxes and hares also reduced part of your activity night, although the latter reappeared precisely on the days when the satellites detected fires, an indication that they were trying to escape the fire caused by the fighting. Spaces that did not move. On the contrary, not all the inhabitants of Chernobyl reacted in an obvious way. Researchers found few changes in species like wolves or Eurasian lynxesalthough recognize that the conclusions are more limited because they were photographed much less frequently. They also propose another possibility: The enormous size of the exclusion zone and the scarce human presence accumulated over decades perhaps cushioned part of the impact that a similar conflict would have had on a much more altered ecosystem. The war left another invisible victim: nature. The study, published in Science magazinedoes not aim to measure the total ecological damage of the invasion, but rather to observe how the fauna reacted while everything was happening. Even so, its authors remember that armed conflicts also destroy habitats, cause fires, introduce pollution and increase the mortality of numerous species. As resume ecologist Kaitlyn Gaynor, animals are involuntary spectators of human wars and we still know very little about the consequences that these episodes leave on them. Chernobyl and the paradox. For decades, the exclusion zone symbolized the biggest nuclear disaster of history. Then it became an unexpected refuge for wildlife. Finally, the Russian invasion added a third, equally improbable chapter: a natural laboratory where the very cameras installed to study animals ended up recording one of the few involuntary experiments on how an entire ecosystem responds when war breaks out in the middle of the forest. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | The men who closed the new Chernobyl hole: “Destiny gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit” In Xataka | We had been wondering for years why the Chernobyl wild boars were so radioactive. The answer was not in the accident

A cement company stopped sending its personnel to inspect dangerous areas. Your new inspector is a robot dog

June 29, 2026 by usatoday24

Even though the conversation revolves around humanoid robotics Lately, this sector has had much more traction in the industry for decades, driving a good part of the current processes and assembly lines. In this regard, a Swiss cement plant has wanted to take advantage of robotics in a somewhat peculiar way: it has been using a quadruped robot to monitor your facilities every night. Below these lines we tell you all the details. The problem that had to be solved. Vigier Ciment has been producing cement in the hills of the Swiss Jura, south of Biel, for a century and a half, generating approximately a fifth of all cement in the country. Its plant houses more than 1,000 machines spread across several buildings and floors, connected by metal stairs of up to 16 sections, areas with temperatures that reach 50 degrees, constant dust and the occasional presence of ammonia near the unloading docks. The maintenance of all this fell to operators who toured the facilities on foot filling out paper records. Over time, continued exposure to these conditions generates what the plant workers themselves call “operational blindness.” You stop seeing what is in front of you because you have already seen it too many times, according to collect Techeblog. The guard dog. Just like account The medium, in November 2024 the Swiss robotics company ANYbotics began talks with Vigier Ciment to deploy its ANYmal quadruped robot at the plant. The robot arrived on January 6, 2025 and before the end of the first month it was already carrying out night patrols completely autonomously. ANYmal is similar in size to a large dog and weighs more than 50 kilos. It does not need human supervision, and its managers say it climbs stairs, avoids obstacles, navigates narrow hallways and accesses areas that previously required considerable effort on the part of staff. What exactly does it do in every round. Every night, even on weekends, ANYmal goes through more than 450 inspection points predefined elements distributed in three mills and six levels. To do this, it has several detection systems, including a visual camera that identifies cracks, oil leaks or corrosion; a thermal camera that measures the temperature of critical components such as bearings, motors and gears; a gas sensor that monitors ammonia levels; and an acoustic camera capable of locating compressed air leaks or filter failures at distances of up to 50 meters. According to point In the middle, all that information is automatically dumped into a software platform called Data Navigator, which analyzes the data collected overnight, compares it to the facility’s history, and generates a daily report for the maintenance team. What he has found along the way. In sixteen months of operation, ANYmal has already completed more than 33,000 inspections without recording any technical failures. According to ANYbotics, the most relevant findings have had a direct impact on plant operations. The middle share In addition, the robot detected a crack in the base of a shredder the size of a large kitchen table. The oil had been leaking for some time and no one had reported it on the usual rounds. The repair was completed the next day. Had it collapsed, the plant would have lost more than a week of production, with estimated losses of more than $630,000, according to the company’s own figures. In another case, thermal monitoring detected a bearing reaching 140 degrees Celsius, allowing a $30,000 eight-hour repair to be scheduled rather than facing a much more costly emergency failure. The robot also detected levels of ammonia exposure at unloading docks that had not been measured until then, and located air leaks in filtration systems installed 50 meters high. Industrial maintenance. The plant’s traditional fixed sensors only covered about 200 elements, mainly on the clinker side (the main component of cement). The robot expands that coverage substantially and accesses areas that static sensors cannot reach. At the same time, it removes operators from the most dangerous environments without reducing the frequency or quality of inspections. Images | ANYbotics In Xataka | One of the big problems with AI is that it always proves you right: this is the most effective way to avoid it

The physical edition of ‘GTA VI’ will be discless and will come with a code. The sad thing is that it has stopped surprising

June 24, 2026 by usatoday24

‘GTA VI‘is warming up. After the second trailer shown in the middle of last year, Rockstar has remained almost stony silent. After a new delay that brought the launch to November 19 of this year, the messages have not arrived even with a dropper, but Reservations open this June 25 and they are going to put the marketing machine at full power. This is allowing us to learn about news such as new (and impressive) screenshots, the price of ‘GTA VI’ and, above all, the fear for many users: The physical version of ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ will not include the disc. It is something that is no longer surprising. The physical ‘GTA VI’ Schrödinger Although we are still waiting for the launch of the third trailer for the game, which is estimated to arrive to accompany the opening of the reservation period, Rockstar did not want to be begged and has been advancing some details. To begin with, an avalanche of screenshots that reconfirm that the game is one of the most ambitious of this generation of consoles. Because ‘GTA VI’ is a game that the company has been cooking for years, it is its first title for the current generation of consoles and it is noticeable that the ‘Red Dead Redemption 2‘ for PS5 and Xbox Series X They have allowed them to learn about the machines to get all the juice possible. Visually, ‘GTA VI’ is going to be crazy The more ambitious you are with the visual and technical section and the size of the game itself, the more complicated it is to condense the product on a disc, and with ‘GTA VI’ it is confirmed that will not have a real physical edition. Before we start evaluating, here is what Rockstar has announced: “Players who pre-order the digital versions of Grand Theft Auto VI will be able to begin pre-loading on November 12, to ensure they can play at launch on November 19. The physical version of Grand Theft Auto VI will include a download code inside the box and will be available starting November 12 to allow pre-loading.” That physical games are not physical games is something that, unfortunately, is no longer an exception. The Game Key Card of nintendo switch 2 They go straight: they are not a game in physical format. Games that are a ‘Code in a box’ are not either, even if that code comes in a box, and ‘GTA VI’ will belong to that second group. This, which has been like this for decades in the PC world, was not so widespread in console games (aside from Nintendo Switch, where a few have already appeared), and it seems that ‘GTA VI’ will be so big, or will have so little sense in its physical version 1.0, that it is not worth it to start “printing” discs. And, as a player who loves the physical format because it is not a simple license to use that the companies they can remove you from your account When they consider that you should no longer have what you paid for, the decision that there is no ‘GTA VI’ in physical format is as sad as it is… curious. Curious because reserving makes no sense beyond whether you want that box with the cover, since You won’t be left without a game on launch day because, in essence, this physical version is a digital version. As digital as what you can buy in the Xbox and PlayStation online store. The twist of ending with the second hand In fact, even if ‘GTA VI’ fits on one Blu Ray (or two, there’s no harm in putting it in two, ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘, ‘Cyberpunk 2077‘ or Rockstar’s own ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ come on two discs), for the company it makes perfect sense that the game is a code and not a Blu-Ray. If everything comes true, and if it turns out as Rockstar hopes, ‘GTA VI’ will be the generational game in the same way they were ‘San Andreas‘ either ‘GTA V‘. It is that game that sells an obscene amount of units and, by ensuring that there is no physical ‘GTA VI’, Rockstar ensures that everyone who wants it has to buy it from them. If I buy the game, I pass it on and leave it to a friend, there are two of us who have played it, but Rockstar has only seen one sale. The same if I sell it to a second-hand store where, to make matters worse, it is the store that takes the profit. If there is no disc, both my friend and I will have to buy the game, and there Rockstar sees two sales. Oh yes, the price of ‘GTA VI’: 80 euros for the normal version, 100 for the ‘Ultimate’. The current evil of games in physical format One of the problems that the current video game industry has is that many releases in physical format are not, really, a physical format. They come in a box, they come with a Blu-Ray, but that 100 GB Blu-Ray only has a few few megabytes of information. What that disk has inside is the code, the key that communicates with the store and that gives you access to download the game. It’s not tied to your account (if you resell it, that other person can download the game again), but you have to play with the disc inserted no matter what and, in x years, when stores or servers close, you will only have a nice paperweight. In short: if I turn on my PS1, my PS2 or my PS3 today, I can play my copy of ‘Final Fantasy VII’ in physical format. When I turn on my PS5 in 20 years, like Microsoft has retired it, the licenses have expired or whatever, I won’t be able to play to ‘Doom The Dark Ages‘ on disk. That is why initiatives such as that of Stop … Read more

stopped cars that cannot leave their ports

June 24, 2026 by usatoday24

China has taken positions in Europe. The European automobile industry is witnessing a rampant arrival of Chinese manufacturers trying to sell as much as possible at the fastest possible pace. Chinese manufacturers looking for factorieswho reach new countries and try to build the necessary infrastructure to place their cars on our roads. A rampant landing that has its consequences in European ports. Overwhelmed. This is what the colleagues of Motorpassion. The large European ports have been filled with Chinese cars that no one can let out. Satellite images show that the large number of these cars is turning what was previously a transit area into authentic fields of Chinese cars. The large European ports are the ones that are most noticing this landing of Chinese cars. Antwerp-Zeebrugge in Belgium, Bremerhaven in Germany or Barcelona in Spain are those that have to deal with higher volumes of vehicles packaged in China and discovered in Europe. What does the data say? Exactly this. They rescue in GFM Review that the large ports mentioned above have found themselves with the problem of managing a huge stock of vehicles for which there is no outlet. So much so that there are vehicles, they say, that have not moved for 18 months. According to data collected by elDiario.esBarcelona is positioning itself as one of the great poles of attraction in Europe. Last year, cars arriving at the Catalan port increased by 5% but imports from China grew by more than 40%. In the month of January alone, the volume of cars received increased by 80% compared to the same month in 2025. In The Mercantile They report that the excess of vehicles in the port has forced unscheduled trains to be mobilized to distribute cars to Madrid, especially Chery’s Omoda and Jaecoo, which have their large operations center in Barcelona. But they point out elDiario.es that other Chinese manufacturers that have recently arrived in Europe, such as Changan or Great Wall Motors (GWM) do not stop adding cars to the Catalan port. Converted into fields. This massive arrival of cars has turned European ports into massive fields for Chinese manufacturers. So much so that Barcelona (which in 2025 it will receive 80% of Chinese cars purchased in Spain and 14% of those purchased in Europe) has underway a project to expand its capacity to assimilate cars, with the NYK shipping company willing to invest 75 million euros in a new terminal that could accommodate 180,000 cars a year. The problem is that these spaces are at their limit because, as we say, cars are not allowed out at the expected rate. It is a story that It has been repeating for two years. Back then, the companies did not have a sufficient distribution network to assimilate the cars that were brought to Europe, but now the problems are different. The problem now is that the manufacturers They are not finding enough truckers to move the cars to their destinations but, in addition, There are more Chinese brands fighting for ports Europeans and a country willing to get all the cars it can out of there. We send them to Europe. For a few months we have been saying that China is determined to send all the cars it can to our continent. Actually, Europe is not its only target market, but the growth in electric sales (in May almost the same electric cars were sold as gasoline cars) and the absence of tariffs on plug-in hybrids make the European market ideal. Chinese companies are encountering problems selling their cars in the local market but their factories continue to produce at full capacity. This has boosted exports to the point that they have taken almost 50% more electric vehicles out of the country than last year and 100% more plug-in hybrids. Brad Setseran export specialist, shows how domestic sales are falling but exports are increasing at a devilish rate and that car production continues to grow. China seems determined to flood the market with the expansion of its brands and the shipment of more and more models even though the ports themselves act as a funnel. It repeats. The situation experienced by European ports is similar to what is being experienced in other markets. As we counted a few weeks ago in XatakaMexico has wanted to impose tariffs on Chinese cars. Its problem is that when it wanted to collect the new taxes, the Chinese manufacturers had already landed thousands of cars there and had them available for distribution. This strategy is accompanied by the commitment that China is making to what is known as the Global South. There, the manufacturers They are dethroning Japan as their priority customerexporting more and more cars that are sold at a more attractive price below the equator line where They already ship more cars than Europe and the United States combined. Photo | Omoda and BYD In Xataka | Japan had dominated total car sales for more than 20 years, until China knocked on the door

stopped cars that cannot leave their ports

June 24, 2026 by usatoday24

The retail SSD market has all but disappeared. And it is not because users have stopped buying them

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

Buying an SSD seemed, until not so long ago, one of those fairly simple decisions in the PC world: choose capacity, look at speeds, compare prices and little else. But the market behind this daily gesture has changed significantly. What we have seen in recent months is not a disappearance of the need for storage, but a much deeper strain on the supply chain. SSDs are still necessary, but an increasing share of drives that could previously end up in the channel retail seems to be finding other destinations before reaching the retail window. what’s happening. The clearest signal was put on the table by Nelson Duann, vice president of Silicon Motion, one of the major manufacturers of SSD controllers. In an interview with Tom’s Hardware during Computex 2026the executive summarized his reading of the market like this: “The retail SSD market has practically disappeared.” He was not talking about a specific drop or a minor adjustment, but rather about what happened during the first half of 2026, a period in which retail sales of SSDs fell significantly. The chain has moved. The key point is who is buying those units now. Duann explained that the controllers sold by silicon motion to module assemblers, that is, companies that integrate memory, controllers and other components to sell complete SSDs, largely end up in units destined for PC manufacturers. It’s not a minor detail: according to that reading, manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Dell or HP can’t get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from the big memory manufacturers, so they are turning to a channel that previously looked much more towards the end user. The pressure of AI. The background appears clearly in TrendForce data. According to the consulting firm, cloud service providers increased demand for enterprise SSDs in the first quarter of 2026 due to the need to build infrastructure for AI servers, with high-speed data transmission and enormous storage capacities. Added to that was another factor: the structural shortage of traditional hard drives pushed a significant portion of orders toward QLC enterprise SSDs. There are figures. TrendForce says the combined revenue of the world’s five largest NAND Flash vendors grew 83.7% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 to exceed $38.9 billion. The increase came in a scenario of strong demand and limited supply, with average sales prices above expectations. The distribution also shows the scale of the phenomenon: Samsung closed the quarter with 13.51 billion dollars, SK hynix Group reached about 7.53 billion and Kioxia reached 5.96 billion. The indirect winnerss. The hit to the retail storefront does not mean that the entire chain is losing at the same rate. Duann added that, in the past, most of these companies were focused on selling to the end user, but since the end of last year and through 2026 that dynamic has changed. Demand from PC manufacturers has strengthened and those suppliers are directing a significant portion of their production directly to them. For companies like Silicon Motion, which sell SSD controllers to these assemblers, the market continues to move, although it does so through another door. What the buyer notices. This industrial readjustment ends up reaching the user in a fairly direct way. As we have seen, the prices of consumer SSDs have increased significantly in recent quarters due to the priority that memory manufacturers are giving to the AI sector. That is to say, the pressure does not stay in the data centers, it also filters down to the shop window and the computer that we end up buying. everything remains the same. TrendForce indicates that large NAND Flash suppliers will add virtually no new capacity during the year and that, due to AI-related demand, supply shortages will remain. Production will also continue to be heavily focused on server storage applications, with high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs gaining penetration. In this context, the retail market is conditioned by an industrial priority that does not aim to change immediately. In summary. The retail SSD market has weakened not because the user no longer needs fast storage, but because the industry has changed its order of priorities. Available NAND is being disputed between data centers, large buyers in the PC industry and companies trying to respond to increasingly server-oriented demand. What once came more naturally to the showcase is now more likely to end up integrated into a new team or AI infrastructure. The SSD is still there, but the usual buyer is no longer first in line. Images | Western Digital + Photoshop In Xataka | SSD prices are so crazy that a 2TB drive for the PS5 costs more than the PS5 itself

Porsche has stopped production of the Taycan because the rich don’t want it. And that says it all about the new Ferrari Luce

May 28, 2026 by usatoday24

The sports and luxury electric car market has been in a week like no one remembered for a long time. Mercedes and Ferrari have presented two supercars that anticipate their next steps regarding their zero emissions and that confirm their commitment to this technology. Porsche, however, is taking the opposite path: it has temporarily suspended production of its Taycans. What has happened? Porsche has temporarily stopped production of its most advanced electric car, the Taycan. At the moment, we know that at the end of last week the production chain stopped and more closures are anticipated in the short term, explain our colleagues from Motorpassion. And the reason is as simple as that they do not sell. They point out in Automotive and Sportwhich in the first quarter of the year barely 3,420 units have been delivered (19% less than in the same period of the previous year). If these figures hold, at the end of the year Porsche would have sold about 14,000 electric supercars, the lowest figure since its launch. We better stop. They say that a withdrawal in time is a victory. In the case of the automobile industry, it is totally true. When overproduced, the product accumulates in warehouses, takes up space and depreciates. In the end, it is best to give it a way out with suggestive discounts that can eat into the profit margin. This is a problem that Stellantis has experienced firsthand, which even came to “give away” the electric Fiat 500 in the United States to get them off your back. Honda has preferred cancel its upcoming electric launches and assume more than 2,000 million dollars in losses due to the expected low demand. This is a problem for any company but it is much more so for a brand like Porsche whose value is based on exclusivity and brand image. Finding dozens of Porsche Taycans online at ridiculous prices (as ridiculous as the price of a car that starts at over 100,000 euros can be) would be killing its position as a brand that one longs to achieve at some point in their life. Have we reached the limit? The Porsche Taycan was a success in its first years. In a few months of 2020, it already placed more than 20,000 units and in its first full year it exceeded 41,000 units. After a small drop in 2022, in 2023 it once again surpassed that barrier of 40,000 units and everything seemed to be going smoothly. In fact, the company based its strategy for the future on electricity as a fundamental pillar. But 2024 arrived and the crash began. Sales fell by half that year. In 2025 they remained at just over 16,000 units and the accounts say that it looks even worse for the remainder of the year. Along the way, the Chinese public that was essential for Porsche has turned its back on itfocusing on luxury cars much cheaper they are faster and that, above all, They offer other types of experiences. Chinese market closedeverything indicates that in the United States and Europe the market is already full of Porsche Taycan. It must be taken into account that the brand also has to deal with the tariffs in the United States which forces them to raise the price of the car or assume a narrower profit margin. We might think that we are facing the usual drop in sales of a product at the end of its commercial life, but the Taycan was renewed in 2024 and there is no announced replacement model that would make it lose its appeal. a trend. The production stoppage of the Taycan is just one more example of how the market is retreating. The company opted to convert the Macan, its great best-seller, into electric and the bet has gone wrong in numerical terms. Also they seem to have gone backwards to its “electric-only” project for the future Porsche 718. “We were wrong,” its former CEO has come to point out.now president of the Volkswagen Group. On the same wavelength, Lamborghini has stopped its plans to put an electric supercar on the market. Lotus, which within Geely was betting everything on pure electric, will also return to the combustion engine although with hybridization. And Mercedes is going the same way because does not sell its most expensive models. a problem. The electric supercar has a problem: it is not sold. In China, where electric has been assumed as the only future, it seems that there is no turning back but in United States emissions regulations have been eliminated and in Europe it will be allowed to sell cars with combustion engines in a movement that limits them to the most expensive and exclusive vehicles. That is to say, in Europe combustion sports cars will be even more exclusive, as the general fleet of vehicles is rapidly electrified. But, also, an electric can’t match the experience of its sound, its smell and its touch. It may be faster but it doesn’t sell the same experience. a clue. In the last week, Mercedes has presented the new Mercedes-AMG GT in its fully electric version. Without noise, they have recorded the sound of the legendary V8 that until now was under the hood to include it as a soundtrack. An attempt to make the car more than just a fast but aseptic product. The other great failure among the public has been the Ferrari Luce. On social networks and even the most renowned voices within the Ferrari orbit They have skinned him. But the movement is interesting because the new electric points to a different strategyto an audience that Ferrari does not have right now. It doesn’t want to be an electric supercar, it wants to be a fashion accessory. And only from there is its launch understood. Photo | In Xataka | The new Ferrari Luce is much more than Ferrari’s first electric car. It is a desperate cry to find a new audience

a primitive galaxy that has stopped spinning much earlier than expected

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

When we think of a spiral galaxywe normally imagine it in rotating motion. It is logical that we do it. After all, that’s what most people do. Only some may have stopped their spin due to collisions or interactions with other galaxies. It is a process that takes many thousands of years. Therefore, when a team of scientists from the University of California Davis came across a very young galaxy completely still They didn’t believe what they were seeing. “Only” 2,000 million years. The galaxy in question, XMM-VID1-2075, formed 2 billion years ago after the big bang. It is a very primitive galaxy, but the light that reaches us is from a young galaxy, which has not had time to stop its spin as planned. The James Webb Space Telescope has observed her along with two other galaxies with similar characteristics, but those do move. Therefore, this must have something special that intrigues scientists a lot. Different movements. Both this galaxy and the other two had been detected and described for the first time thanks to the WM Keck observatory, located in Hawaii. The James Webb intended to study them in more detail and focus attention on their movement. It has been seen that one of them moves normally and the other in a somewhat disordered way, but both rotate. Only XMM-VID1-2075 has stopped spinning. Yes, it has some very chaotic internal movement, but no circles. Important data. Thanks to these observations it has been seen that this galaxy is very massive, one of the most massive primitive galaxies that have been detected so far. It has also been observed that new stars are no longer forming inside it. All this data leads us to think what could have happened to stop its rotation so soon. An unexpected merger. The authors of this research believe that, instead of many collisions over a long time, this galaxy experienced the early merger of a single galaxy that was spinning in completely the opposite direction. This offset his movement and caused him to stop. It is a hypothesis that is also supported by the fact that there is a large concentration of light on one side of the galaxy. Possibly where the merger occurred. Very few. According to the simulations carried out following this study, there should be very few galaxies like this in the universe. However, it will be interesting to find them, in order to understand what the dawn of the universe was like and the different galactic behaviors that have occurred since then. Sometimes exceptions can help us understand the rule much better. Image of Andromeda (not the galaxy in the article) | Adam Evans In Xataka | These real images were unthinkable before the Webb telescope: they are planets orbiting other stars 130 light years away

Taylor Swift has stopped by the patent office with two phrases and a photo. Its objective is to stop generative AI

April 29, 2026 by usatoday24

Two phrases spoken in promotions for their latest album and a photograph from a concert from the ‘Eras Tour’. Taylor Swift has simply registered that with the US Patent and Trademark Office as a strategy to shield herself from generative AI. He is not the first famous person to walk this path, but he is the first so famous. AI is already beyond the control of platforms and courts: will it succeed when the (inevitable) clash with one of the most powerful people in today’s entertainment industry arrives? The record. On April 24, Swift’s company, TAS Rights Management, submitted three applications before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). They were detected and analyzed by the lawyer specialized in intellectual property Josh Gerben: two are sound markssound marks with the phrases “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift” and “Hey, it’s Taylor”, taken from promotional introductions to her album ‘The Life of a Showgirl’. The third is a visual mark: Swift with a pink guitar and black strap, bodysuit multicolored and silver boots, on a pink stage. Legal loopholes. Generative AI can replicate a person’s voice without having to copy any specific file, usually protected by copyright. The model learns the timbre, the cadence, the phonetic pattern, and then generates completely new audios. Classic tools to protect copyright are of no use here. The loophole that Gerben believes can protect Taylor (and the rest of the artists) is the “trademark law” that pursues any use that is “confusingly similar” to something registered, that is, anything that is similar enough to generate confusion. A complicated story. Swift comes to this decision after a long history of clashes with AI. In January 2024, a flood of pornographic images generated with AI They spread across X with such speed that the platform had to temporarily block searches for their name. They had been originated on 4chanwhere users competed to avoid the filters of platforms such as DALL-E or Microsoft Designer. And in the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump shared artificially generated images which suggested that Swift supported him. It’s not the first. Taylor Swift has a precedent in the guild. In January of this year, Matthew McConaughey became the first Hollywood actor to use this strategy on a large scale: eight trademarks that include video clips, audio recordings and his famous phrase “Alright, alright, alright” with which he debuted in ‘Movida del 76’. Paradoxically, McConaughey is an investor in ElevenLabs, a company specializing in AI voice cloning. Another trivial precedent. In 2024, Scarlett Johansson publicly denounced that OpenAI had released a voice for its GPT-4o chatbot that sounded “eerily similar” to hers, even though Johansson had previously declined an offer to lend her voice. OpenAI withdrew it, but without giving any explanation as to whether it was due to legal pressure or for another reason. It was a small victory for artists in this field, but without a judicial resolution that could set a precedent. The doubts. Gerben believes that there may be, thanks to this move by Swift, some deterrent potential: “in theory, if a lawsuit were filed over the use of Swift’s voice by an AI, she could claim that any use of her voice that sounds like the trademark violates her trademark rights.” Of course, he acknowledges that “the strategy of registering yourself has not yet been tested in court with respect to AI.” Swift and McConaughey are literally opening avenues that it is not yet clear how they will work legally. In Xataka | After destroying her tour, her film and being the queen of streaming, Taylor Swift achieves a new milestone: being a billionaire

Putting on a bear suit to defraud more than $141,000 in car insurance seemed believable. Until it stopped being

April 27, 2026 by usatoday24

There are stories that seem written not to be believed. It all starts with a luxury car, a course bear attack in the middle of California and some images that, in theory, should prove everything. The story fits in appearance, damage to the interior of the vehicle, claw marks, an animal that would have entered and destroyed the cabin. However, from the first moment there is something that squeaks. It’s not so much what you see, but how you see it, as if the scene is too well constructed to be real. The story began to go wrong when an insurance company reviewed more carefully a claim registered on January 28, 2024 in Lake Arrowhead, an area of California where the presence of bears is not unusual. The report described how the animal had accessed the interior of a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost and caused damage to the seats and doors. The images provided seemed to support it, but the company detected enough inconsistencies to take it a step further. That notice ended up triggering a formal investigation by the California Department of Insurance. When the bear didn’t look like a bear From that moment, the investigation began to reconstruct how the scene had been created. As detailed by the California Department of Insurancethe alleged attack did not have any wild animal behind it, but rather a person dressed in a bear suit. To simulate damage, they used utensils claw-shaped kitchen tools, designed to tear meat, with which they marked seats and interior panels. The objective was clear: to build visual evidence convincing enough to support the claim before the insurer. The case stopped seeming timely when investigators found more claims with the same pattern. It wasn’t just one vehicle or one insurer. Those involved filed similar requests with two other companies, alleging that a bear had caused damage to the interior of two Mercedes-Benzes on the same day and at the same location. The recordings associated with these cases showed practically identical scenes, with the alleged animal accessing the cars and moving around inside them. With several files on the table, the California Department of Insurance formalized the investigation under the name “Operation Bear Claw.” The objective was clear: to analyze the claims together, images and videos provided to determine whether they responded to real events or a montage. The investigators reviewed the material provided, compared the damage described and reconstructed the sequence of the alleged attacks. As they progressed, the coincidences stopped seeming coincidental and began to fit into the same scheme. The key finally came together when an outside specialist reviewed the recorded material. A biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife examined the images and his conclusion was straightforward. The expert noted that the alleged animal was “clearly a human in a bear suit.” This technical assessment marked a before and after in the investigation, because it transformed a suspicion into a statement supported by professional analysis. One expert noted that the alleged animal was “clearly a human in a bear suit.” The next piece of the case came during the execution of a search warrant. In a home related to those involved, investigators found what until then only fit based on clues. The authorities They located a brown bear suit and kitchen tools used to tear meat. Both elements coincided with what was observed in the videos and with the way in which the damage had been caused, thus closing the circle between theory and material evidence. With the evidence now consolidated, the case moved to the judicial field. Those involved were arrested in November 2024 after the investigation. Three of them, residents of Los Angeles County, pleaded “no contest,” a formula by which they do not formally admit guilt but do not dispute the charges, in the face of accusations of insurance fraud, a serious crime. They were later convicted to 180 days in jail, approximately six months, and in two of the cases they were also ordered to pay more than $50,000 each in restitution. The economic figure helps to size the case. According to official information, the claims presented allowed those involved to obtain more than $141,000 in insurance payments. It was not a failed attempt from the beginning, but rather a scheme that managed to overcome the first filters and generate income. Only when an insurer flagged a claim as suspicious and the investigation moved forward did the case stop appearing to be an isolated incident. Although three of those involved have already been convicted, the investigation remains open. According to official information, a fourth defendant, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in September. His case has not yet gone through the same phase as that of the others involved, so his responsibility within the scheme will be evaluated in the next judicial steps. The story, in that sense, is not completely over yet. The story ends as it began, with a scene that was intended to seem convincing and that, seen as a whole, was not so convincing. For a time, the plan worked and made it possible to obtain money from various insurers, but every detail that sought to reinforce the story ended up playing against him. The repetition of the same pattern, the analysis of the images and the appearance of material evidence ended up dismantling the initial version. Images | Valeriia Neganova | California Department of Insurance | Alexander Bendus In Xataka | In 2019, Elon Musk promised autonomous driving for all Teslas sold since then. In 2026, it has reversed

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