suffered

In 2003, NASA suffered a serious accident that killed seven people. The person in charge: a PowerPoint

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On January 16, 2003, NASA’s STS-107 mission was underway. The space shuttle Columbia was launched with its seven crew members into low orbit to test the effects of microgravity on the human body. Those seven people never returned to Earth. The tragedy could have been avoided, but years later the analysis of everything that happened those days has left a terrible conclusion: a presentation of PowerPoint He killed those seven people. The launch, as said James Thomasseemed to be perfect. The crew began to carry out their task, and were expected to spend 16 days in space performing 80 experiments. Just one day after the mission began, NASA officials realized that something had not gone right. NASA has a protocol for reviewing the launch with external cameras. After 82 seconds, a piece of spray foam insulation (SOFI) fell off one of the ramps that attached the shuttle to its external fuel tank. As the crew rose at 28,968 kilometers per hour, the piece of foam collided with one of the tiles on the outer edge of the ship’s left wing. The insulating foam coming off was nothing new: it had happened on the four previous missions and was the reason the cameras were deployed to analyze the launch. The problem is that the blow had occurred in the layer that protected the ship during its re-entry to Earth. The slides of yore What did NASA do? Study the possibilities and conclude that there were three: First, the astronauts could have done a spacewalk to check the helmet. Second, NASA could have sent another shuttle to pick up the crew. Third, they could risk simply re-entry. Those responsible for the mission analyzed the situation with Boeing engineers and created a report in the form of a PowerPoint presentation with 28 slides. The conclusions revealed something important: it was assumed that the wing tiles could tolerate foam impacts, but that assumption had been made under very particular conditions. The pieces of foam in the tests were 600 times smaller than those that had hit the Columbia. To reflect those details, the engineers created this slide: At NASA they listened to the explanation, and the engineers believed they had conveyed the risks well. However, NASA believed that the engineers, even without being certain, suggested that there was no damage that would put the lives of the crew in danger. The option they chose was the third. Columbia would re-enter on February 1, 2003, at 9:16 AM (EST). At 9 that day, Dallas residents saw how the ferry had disintegrated into pieces. The entire crew died. The investigation into the tragedy revealed that NASA and engineers had had the right information, but had made a bad decision. Edward Tufte, a Yale professor, explained that the problem had been with that damn slide and the way it had been presented. The title already seemed to indicate that the risk was not particularly high, but the slide also had four cascading points with no detailed explanation of what they meant: interpretation was left to the reader’s discretion. It was not clear whether the first point (1) was the main one, or if the rest of the points had the same relevance. The different font sizes, strange hierarchy, and text density didn’t help. There were over 100 vague words and adjectives (“sufficient,” “meaningful”), making the slide too open to audience interpretation. The biggest problem is in the last two points, where it was indicated that what they had tested in the preliminary tests was very different from what had happened. NASA itself indicated in your report after the investigation that they had relied too much on PowerPoint. The expression ‘death by PowerPoint’ has been used for years to indicate how there are presentations that induce boredom or fatigue due to their information overload. A bad design and the overuse of points to order each data are common problems in this and other similar applications. Unfortunately, in this case that expression became tragically true. In Xataka | A new “solar system” has just been discovered. There’s just one problem: it shouldn’t exist. In Xataka | Boeing was trying to put the Starliner fiasco behind it: NASA has just classified the 2024 incident at its highest level

The California peach industry has suffered an unprecedented collapse. But it will be repeated, it will be repeated a lot, it will be repeated all over the world

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Richard Lial He lived peacefully in his little house in Escalonnorthern California. He had acres and acres of productive almond trees that he had been exploiting for the last decade. But three years ago, just when costs began to become unsustainable, Del Monte (one of the largest fruit and vegetable companies in the world) made him an offer. A 20-year contract for Lial to exchange its almond trees for the peaches that the company’s large cannery in Modesto needed. Del Monte’s move put on the table some 550 million over the next few years and a business of tens of thousands of tons per season. The problem is that on July 1, 2025, Del Monte Food Corp declared bankruptcythe Modesto plant has closed and, with it, the entire Californian peach industry has collapsed. What exactly happened? Del Monte accumulated a debt of 1,245 million dollars on the day they filed the bankruptcy petition. And the reason is simple: in recent years, the company had been going into debt to make certain purchases in a sector that was in full decline. Today, the world consumes less canned goods and Del Monte executives believed that the only way to survive was to grow and ensure margins. The problem is that, with the rate increase in the months prior to the bankruptcy declaration, interest had doubled to the point of eating into the operating margin (a margin already quite affected by things like Trump’s tariffs that had made cans more expensive). The chaos has lasted for many months, but on February 6 the courts approved the sale of the company in parts. Peach growers breathed easy until they discovered that none of the buyers wanted the plant of Modesto. And why is that plant so important? Well, because Del Monte did not ask farmers to plant the peach they wanted. They were asked to plant the clingstone variety: a peach that simply has no fresh market. The pulp of the clingstone adheres to the bone and makes direct consumption uncomfortable. That is, it is a variety whose only destination is processors. In this case, the Modesto plant consumed 35% of the production of this stone fruit, about 50,000 tons in 2026. They are, to be honest, 50,000 tons that are now almost impossible to place anywhere. But the problem transcends 2026… Because the contracts that Del Monte I was signing Until a few months before the bankruptcy, they forced farmers to make investments of around $8,000 per acre in exchange for the peace of mind that comes with a 20-year contract. They went into debt for it. Many made the transition in 2023. So there are about 140 Californian farmers fgame era and some 1,200 jobs will be lost. But the impact is deeper. And it is not that talking about ‘sector cataclysm’ is not justified, it is that the central issue is the structural dependency that the dynamics of the primary sector are pushing the economy towards. …and that transcends even the peach. Because it doesn’t matter what product we look at: the consequences of financialization are there. It is enough to remember that in 2015 there were only 45 funds specialized in ‘agrobusiness’ in the world; Today they exceed 1,000 and move an enormous amount of money that is radically changed the way everything is managed. The rresult is as simple as it is tragic: Capital arrives, exploits the land as if there were no tomorrow, exhausts the territory’s resources, abuses the local socio-productive fabric and leaves. One day we will realize that there will be nothing left. Image | Ayla Meinberg In Xataka | Spain faces its greatest agricultural challenge of the century: converting 1,901,529 hectares of olive groves into irrigation before it is too late

The most advanced Spanish military satellite suffered an impact in space more than a week ago. There are still no clear explanations

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For years, Spain has invested millions of euros in building a space communications system designed for extreme scenarios, from military operations to international emergencies. One of its pillars, the satellite SpainSat NG II, It took off in October with everything as planned and within a program presented as the most ambitious in Spanish space history. However, something happened very soon during its transfer to its orbital position. More than a week after an incident was acknowledged, what surrounds the satellite’s true status is a combination of minimal data and silence that leaves many questions open. An aging statement. The only thing confirmed so far comes from a statement released by Indra January 2, 2026in which it is recognized that the satellite suffered the “impact of a space particle” during its transfer to the final orbit. The incident occurred about 50,000 kilometers from Earth, still an intermediate phase of the journey to its geostationary position. Since then, the technical team is analyzing the available data to determine the extent of the damage, but no assessment of its operational status or the actual consequences of the impact has been made public. The launch of SpainSat NG II took place on the night of October 23 in the United States, already in the early hours of the 24th in Spain, aboard a Falcon 9 bound for a geostationary transfer orbit. From there, the satellite had to complete a journey of several months until reaching its final position about 36,000 kilometers from Earth, a process that, according to the CEO of Hisdesat told Euronews, usually takes between five and six months. The impact recognized by Indra occurred in that intermediate phase of the journey, when the satellite had not yet reached its final operational orbit. The reaction. In that same statement, Indra explained that Hisdesat, operator and owner of the satellite, had activated a contingency plan to guarantee that the committed services are not affected. The formulation fits with the logic of a two-satellite system, which seeks to ensure continuity of service even in the event of unforeseen incidents. However, the specific measures adopted and the current degree of dependence on the affected satellite within the program as a whole have not been detailed, which limits the ability to evaluate the real scope of this response. Twin units. SpainSat NG II is not an isolated satellite, but one of the two central pieces of a system conceived as a long-term strategic infrastructure. Along with his twin, the SpainSat NG Iis part of a program promoted by the Ministry of Defense with an investment of more than 2,000 million eurosintended to provide Spain with its own secure communications. The first satellite has already been operational since the summer, while the second was to complete the system, a context that explains the attention that any anomaly in its deployment has generated. The secrets of the satellite. From a technical point of view, SpainSat NG II represents a notable leap over previous generations of government communications satellites. Built by Airbus on the Eurostar Neo platformthe satellite has dimensions close to seven meters and a mass of around six tons. Its payload incorporates an X-band active antenna system that, according to Airbus, offers the equivalent functionality of 16 traditional antennas and allows coverage to be dynamically adapted up to 1,000 times per second, a capacity designed for changing and demanding operating scenarios. More questions than answers. With the information available, the range of scenarios remains wide. An impact from a space particle can result in minor damage without operational consequences, but also in a more serious impact that forces the functions to be limited or the deployment of the satellite to be reconsidered. Indra has even left open the option of a replacement if necessary, and maintains that, in that case, the satellite would be replaced as soon as possible. The absence of specific technical data makes it impossible to know whether this is a controlled incident or a problem with deeper implications. Given the lack of public updates, from Xataka we have contacted Indra to find out if there was any news about the status of the satellite. The company’s press office has responded to us that, for now, they have no details to share about what happened. That silence prolongs the uncertainty around a strategic system that has not yet entered service and leaves open key questions about the real scope of the impact. Images | Airbus (1, 2) | Thales In Xataka | We already have an official date for the United States’ return to the Moon: it is imminent and mired in a sea of ​​doubts

In 1962, a remote village in Tanzania suffered an epidemic of laughter. To this day we still have not been able to cure it.

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If you are one of those who are easily infected by other people’s laughter, you probably would not have survived what happened to a town of Tanganyika on January 30, 1962. This is what two doctors say who compiled the facts: at a girls’ missionary school in the town of Kashasha, on the coast of what we currently know as Lake Victoria (Tanzania), three students began to joke. His laugh mutated from normal to nervous, ceasing to be both a manifestation of humor and something more disturbing. The girls couldn’t stop laughing hysterically. Laughter, that traditional escape valve, was now a terrifying reaction. Without knowing very well how, the rest of the school began to be infected with this effect, and within a few hours 95 of the 159 attendees at school were also laughing for hours, 16 hours in a row in the most serious cases. These were the facts that caught the attention of the doctors: on the one hand, the Kashasha school also operated as a residence. The girls slept in communal rooms, dividing themselves into rooms with girls of various ages. Those affected were not located in specific points of the residence, there were no rooms where everyone suffered from hysteria at the same time, but instead They were distributed throughout the center. None of the two Europeans and three Africans who worked as teachers suffered any uncontrollable panic attacks. Trying to put a stop to the phenomenon, the residence and school were closed for a month. The girls went home, but instead of stopping it, they extended it much further: after ten days, cases of uncontrollable laughter were observed 80 kilometers from the school. Five months later the final count in this area of ​​10,000 people was 217 people treated and around 1,000 affected. Boys and girls suffered from it indiscriminately, children but also some young people, and mostly illiterate kids with modest finances. Each patient’s attacks lasted an average of four to eight hours, with a known case of 16 consecutive daysand after the attack subsided they usually suffered one or two more. No one had more than four attacks. Although we imagine these abductions as something comical, comedy was the last of the predominant feelings during those episodes: to the laughter was added crying, respiratory problems, a general restlessness of the subject, manifestation of violence towards others and, in some specific cases, paranoia, with girls commenting that there were demonic subjects chasing them. Would the corn flour have been contaminated? Maybe a new virus? Maybe a supernatural curse? The blood samples that were sent to the laboratories came back with a NAD, “Nothing Abnormal Detected”. There are even those who suspected that everything could have been distorted or invented. This hypothesis lost strength over the years. For a very simple reason: because other outbreaks of sudden, very strange social epidemics were observed. The dance, the fainting, the dream In 1983in the area of ​​the West Bank occupied by the Israeli army, it was seen that at least 400 Arab girls and a teacher had spontaneously suffered nausea, nervousness and dizziness, ending in fainting and loss of consciousness. Over time, some Israeli female soldiers would also disappear. In Virginia, United States, some high school students suffered a mass hysteria of laughter equal to that of Tanganyika in the 60s. Any new drugs? Anyone put laughing gas through the vents? “The school is still safe”said the authorities, who at the end of the cycle attributed the circumstance to a “unusual stress” that students might be suffering. In 2017 a strange local Swedish phenomenon was published in the press for the first time that has been going on for decades. There have not been many cases between the 90s and 2010, but only between 2015 and 2016 there were almost 200 cases at once. Only the children of refugees who have requested asylum suffer from it. As soon as the parents know that permission has been denied, some of these children enter a kind of coma: they remain completely passive, do not speak, eat or drink, lose control of their sphincters and do not know how to react to pain. Swedish doctors say they do not know what to do, since the investigation of the event causes the epidemic to spread with new cases. They do not doubt the veracity of the phenomenon: although attempts at fraud have been discovered, with parents simulating the effect on their children to stay longer in the host country, most cases have been authenticated. Psychologists have named the ailment as Resignation Syndromealthough the hypothesis of studying it as another case of “epidemic hysteria” was considered. The academic term for epidemic hysteria is “mass psychogenic illness”or MPI, as it appears abbreviated in psychiatry manuals. To say that there are few certainties is to exceed the medical achievements achieved to determine what these attacks consist of. They are episodes so specific and so little controllable that, as they come, they go. Among the common aspects that have been seen are: a) that there is no plausible organic basis; b) that there is previously excessive anxiety in the affected group; and c) that spreads through sight, sound or oral communication. Although the effects are physical, it seems that it is a disease closely linked to the psychological. Although it has not been possible to study it correctly due to its lack of data, some historical cases of hysteria have subsequently been read as examples of the MPI. There they were dance epidemics in medieval Europein which the local population danced or held obscene orgies for hours or days, leading some to death. In search of answers The priests who were going to exorcise the novices of the cloistered convents Sometimes they noted that several of these newcomers suffered from it at the same time. Perhaps in response to the excessive discipline and poverty of the lives that awaited them, many of them began to meow, insult and seduce their companions. Although it … Read more

Spotify has suffered the largest music theft in history. One that confirms that most of their catalog is never heard

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Anna’s Archive was already known by literature lovers, who turned to this repository to be able to access books of all kinds without having to pay for them. Now they want to achieve the same thing with music, and they have taken a colossal and disturbing step: stealing practically the entire Spotify catalog. What is Anna’s Archive. Anna’s Archive project appeared on the scene in late 2022, shortly after legal pressure managed to knock down the Z-Library platformone of the largest websites for downloading free books. The platform works as a metasearch engine that allows you to find books and then download them. Anna’s Archive does not host these files—which, according to the project, exempts it from legal responsibility—and links to different anonymous download providers, which is where users can obtain them. Until now the platform focused on books, but that has changed. The biggest music theft in history. In a post published on his blog official this weekend, those responsible for Anna’s Archive indicated that they have made “a backup copy” of Spotify that includes both metadata and music files. Not only that: it is indicated that they are distributing all this information through torrent files, and the total download takes up 300 TB of data “grouped by popularity.” 86 million songs. They call it the first music “preservation archive” in history and it has 86 million music files. Although that figure is only 37% of the songs in Spotify’s entire catalog, according to Anna’s Archive they account for 99.6% of listening on Spotify. And here there are two important things: on the one hand, music as such. And on the other hand, the metadata that surrounds that music, and that offers very interesting information about Spotify’s music catalog. The top 10,000 popularity. Thus, at Anna’s Archive they wanted to organize that archive based on “popularity”, a metric that they use in Spotify to order the songs that are listened to the most and how recent those plays are. Those responsible for Anna’s Archive have compiled a gigantic list with the 10,000 most popular songs according to this metric. Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish occupy the top three positions, for example. This graph reveals how song popularity demonstrates the long tail phenomenon. Only 62 songs exceed 90 points. Three out of four songs are not heard. By grouping songs by popularity, the metadata reveals and confirms the traditional long tail phenomenon. More than 70% of the songs in the Spotify catalog are barely listened to (less than 1,000 plays), and there are so many that are popular or that they had to cut the gigantic file (it would have been 700 TB) to end that representation of 99.6% of songs that have minimal popularity on Spotify. That does not mean that they are better or worse, be careful: it just means that they have been heard more or less on the platform. We all hear (more or less) the same thing. Most listens come to songs with popularity between 50 and 80, and here comes an expected figure: of the 86 million songs, only 210,000 exceed 50 popularity (0.1%). Or what is the same: almost everyone basically listens to a very small set of songs compared to the size of the catalog. How much is each song listened to? Those responsible for Anna’s Archive claim that it is possible to estimate the total number of views per song thanks to popularity. They gave the example of the first three: ‘Die with a smile’ (Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars), 3,075 million views ‘Birds of a feather’ (Billie Eilish): 3,137 million views ‘DtMF’ (Bad Bunny): 1,124 million views Between the three of them they accumulate as many listens as the songs that are between number 20 and number 100 million have. Once again, the long tail in action. Analysis everywhere. These metadata are very useful, and Anna’s Archive has produced a unique report in which they reveal conclusions based on the data collected. Thus, you can confirm how the most common length of songs is around 3:30 minutes, how there are numerous duplicates per song (licenses, versions, etc.), which ones are the most popular genres between artists or how most of the songs on Spotify are singles, and not part of an album. These metadata are a true treasure for market researchers. Downloading (for now) only in large torrents. At Anna’s Archive they have not published almost any of the torrents so far, but they have already indicated how they will offer those 300 TB. First, the metadata in a 200 GB file, which is already being shared by about 200 people. Then the music in various batches organized by popularity. Finally, some additional metadata and content like album art designs. Time will tell if those 86 million songs end up being available on some type of platform that links them to download individually. At Anna’s Archive that does not seem to be the intention, at least for now, and at the moment the metasearch engine focuses strictly on books. What Spotify says. As they point out in TorrentFreakthose responsible for Spotify have launched an investigation, and as a result have “identified and deactivated the accounts of malicious users who were participating in illegal scraping activities.” They have also implemented new measures to prevent these types of attacks and “are monitoring suspicious behavior.” Image | Sumeet B In Xataka | The chaos of streaming is causing a phenomenon that we thought was in recession: downloads are increasing

When Spacex suffered his worst incident, Elon Musk blamed a sniper of the competition. The FBI had to intervene

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On the morning of September 1, 2016, Spacex suffered one of the most cautious and controversial incidents in its history. A Falcon 9 rocket that was vertical on the launch platform Suddenly exploded With the Israeli satellite A Amos-6 aboard. Elon Musk accused the competition. A violent explosion. It was one of the first times that Spacex operated the Falcon 9 rocket with cryogenic propelants, a technique that consists in superfrging the fuel and oxidant to maximize its performance. Before the launch, Spacex had planned a static ignition test, a routine procedure in which engines are tested with the rocket anchored to the platform, but everything was twisted eight minutes before ignition. A violent explosion transformed what was a rocket into a huge fireball. The payload was shot. Mark Zuckerberg’s anger. The AMOS-6 satellite was not any load. With a cost of 200 million dollars, he had a powerful customer: Mark Zuckerberg. Goal, then Facebook, had reached an agreement to provide Free Internet Access in Africa Thanks to the satellite. After the explosion, Zuck He publicly expressed A “deep disappointment” for the rocket explosion, comments that did not sit well in Spacex, where morality was on the ground. According to Ars Techcnicathis incident was one of the points of origin of the bad relationship between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, which years later would lead the first to eliminate Spacex and Tesla’s Facebook pages. The theory of the sniper. The most trospid of the incident was, however, the theory promoted by Elon Musk about the possible intervention of a sniper. Theory in which Spacex insisted throughout the official investigation of the incident, According to documentation that has just become public. Although Spacex engineers shuffled hundreds of hypotheses, Elon Musk promoted the idea of ​​an external sabotage: the shot of a sniper. It sounds crazy, but Musk saw the two main indications convincing: the break began about 60 meters high, on the side of the rocket that looked towards a building leased by its main competitor, United Launch Alliance. An alleged ULA shot. The ULA building, a joint business of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, was a kilometer and a half of the Spacex launch platform, a reasonable distance for a sniper. Put to believe, even seemed to see a flash on the roof of the building, coinciding with the time it would take a projectile to reach the rocket. The rivalry between SpaceX and ULA had then reached its peak. Ul still dominated the market of military and government launches, the most lucrative, but Spacex had just won a battle in the courts to compete for these contracts. However, accusing a sabotage competitor without evidence was a serious accusation. The FBI came to intervene. Azuzados by Musk, Spacex engineers thoroughly investigated the sniper theory. They tried to access the ULA roof and performed shooting against pressurized helium tanks to see if they exploited similarly to Falcon 9. The insistence was such that the Federal Aviation Administration had to intervene with a letter that denied the involvement of third parties. There was no sniper, although, as the documentation of the journalist Eric Berger has revealed For your book Recentryeven the FBI investigated the case. The federal agents reviewed the Spacex analysis and the video material, but they concluded that “there were no indications that suggested that sabotage or any other criminal activity played a role in the explosion of Falcon 9”. With this, FAA considered the closed matter. What happened then. The real cause of the rocket explosion and, with it, of the AMOS-6 satellite, was the process of loading propellents. In its eagerness to accelerate the refueling process with super -refrained liquid oxygen, the Spacex equipment filled the helium tanks too fast, heating the aluminum coating of the rocket and causing its deformation and rupture. Spacex would put the hair of Punta to the NASA security office for its procedure “Load and Go”, which proposed to raise astronauts to the rocket before loading fuel. Over time, not only would demonstrate the reliability of Falcon 9 (Last year he completed 137 launches against the five of ULA), but would become the main supplier of NASA manned releases to the International Space Station. Images | And combinator, Uslaunchreport, CNN Money (YouTube) In Xataka | Texas has a new city. Until a few days ago, it was only Spacex’s base in Boca Chica

Spain suffered a mass blackout. The distributed teleworking came immediately to save many companies

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Spain has lived an unprecedented fact in its history: A generalized blackout that affected the electricity supply of The entire Iberian Peninsulaincluding Portugal. As a collateral effect due to saturation, the mobile communications network He also collapsed. This made the normal development of The working day. So many companies ended up closing their doors. The blackout that Spain has suffered has been A very extreme casebut teleworking and, above all, distributed work has saved the furniture of those companies that did not have a staff structure based on workers resident in a single citycountry and even continent. While many companies They were forced at closing For not having electricity or Internet access, including those with remote employees, companies with remote workers distributed throughout the world demonstrated their resilience to any local incidence such as the one that left Spain in the dark. We have talked to two of those companies that could maintain their activity in Spain thanks to remote work distributed by different countries. Distributed work and global blackout templates One of the things that the proliferation of the Teleworking after the 2020 pandemicis that talent It no longer has borders And, thanks to technology, someone in Bali I could be teleworking For a Spanish company without any problem. Some digital native companies such as Eventbritea platform for the sale of tickets and events, broke with their centralized organization following the pandemic, and chose to redesign their structure in A decentralized model Based on small teams distributed throughout the world, but mainly in the US, India and Spain. Jaime ValloriVice President of Eventbrite engineering assured that Thanks to that decentralized structureEventbrite continued to function normally while the blackout lasted. “We organize in teams (Squads) that are responsible for the maintenance of the detail pages of certain events. On Monday, the Squads of Spain is not that they could not do the maintenance of those events, they could not even know if something happened because they could not access,” Vallori told us. Before such a scenariothe rest of the teams located outside Spain took over from their teammates. “We activate a protocol so that the teams we have in the United States and India, proactively monitoring those areas that we covered from Spain, but obviously, could not be covered by our team,” said Eventbrite Engineering head in Spain. Vallori stressed that the platform has an incident alert protocol that is automatically climbing to different equipment if it is not answered in a certain period of time. “Since we are geographically distributed, throughout that protocol there is people from different areas of the world Until you get up at all. Therefore, although we had not given us time to activate that checkup (of local events) proactively, in the end through the scaling, it would have reached someone who could access and resolve the incidence, “Vallorí explained. “Our customer service is also distributed between the United States and other countries,” says Vallori. Therefore, if someone with sufficient coverage In Spain I would like to be attended by the company’s customer service could have done so because it remained active despite the fact that the development team in Spain was not operational. Blablacar continued moving in the dark Víctor Méndez, Vice President of Engineering of Blablacar, already told us the Advantages of having a remote template distributed by different countries. Resilience to an event like the blackout that Spain has suffered is one that can add to its list. Florent BannwarthCountry Lead de Blablacar, lived in the first person the disconnection of your entire team of the company’s infrastructure. “He had time to see him come a little and notify France and other countries from which he was going to come to Spain. No one was going to be able to use the platform and we did not know when he was going to re -normalize. So from France they could organize and gave us support, “Bannwarth recalled. In addition to the shared car service, Blablacar also manages an international bus service, so it starts from France’s support was based on replacing the Spanish team in the management of those buses that came out of different parts of Spain. If not for them, This service would have stopped workingjust at the time when neither trains nor airplanes They operated normally. “The service worked without incident and had an important peak of activity, especially between Barcelona and cities in southern France such as Perpignan and Toulouse, many passengers. At the last minute the only thing that worked It was the bus“The head of the Blablacar team in Spain said. On the other hand, Blablacar’s distributed model allowed teams from other countries Maintain the operational platform in Spain so that it would not register incidents once the service was restored, avoiding delays in its implementation as it happened In the railway sector. “The next Tuesday was the day that the most reservations made in Blablacar in more than 15 years in Spain”, due to the need for urgent displacement of those who They had stayed halfway of his destinations because of the blackout. “Another advantage we had was that, part of the user service team that attends in Spanish, works from France and other countries,” although Spain’s staff of Spain was not operational, users who had coverage could solve their incidents normally. In Xataka | Companies that have eliminated teleworking are facing a big problem: they take longer to cover their vacancies Image | Unspash (Dmitry Grachyov)

The English Court has suffered unauthorized access. It is a new threat that will be primed with Phishing’s messages

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El Corte Inglés, the great Spanish commercial chain, has suffered an indirect exfiltration of data. This was confirmed by those responsible in an email they have sent to their customers. In fact, it has been received by several people from the Xataka writing. In the message the English Court indicates that “recently an external supplier has suffered unauthorized access to personal data of our clients.” That means that the problem has arisen in the external supplier, and not directly in the systems of El Corte Inglés. The entity claims to have detected the problem and claim that “it was corrected immediately”, and the facts have already been informed of the authorities. The following indicates the following: “The information that has been accessed unauthorized consists of identifying and contact data, as well as shopping card numbers only in El Corte Inglés. In any case, such information does not allow third parties to operate or make payments with its El Corte Inglés card. You can continue using your card with total security, both in our stores and through our website and app, as well as in other shops. “ Thus, in El Corte Inglés they ensure that despite having leaked that data, such infromation cannot be used to operate with said cards. In fact, they emphasize that you can continue using the card without problems. The entity also warns customers that Be careful with possible phishing attackswhich are the most common after such theft. Once cybercounts are made with that data, they or others can use them as “hook” to supplant the identity of El Corte Inglés. However, from the entity they emphasize that they will never request passwords, security codes or confidential information by telephone, email or text messages. Customers can in any case contact the Corte Inglés service on the free phone 900 334 334 or send an email to the address delegate.proteccionatos@elcorteingles.es. In Xataka | Cybercriminals are delighted with AI: they are using it according to a Microsoft and OpenAI study

The companies of AI have been jumping the copyright for years. They have just suffered a disturbing legal defeat

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Thomson Reuters He has won The first important case against AI in the United States. This legal victory can end up being an important precedent in an open war that exists between generative companies and human creators and content creative companies. When chatgpt or existed. One of the curiosities of the case is that the demand arrived in 2020, even before the revolution created by Chatgpt and other generative AI models occurred. At that time Thomson Reuters demanded the startup of the so -called Ross Intelligence. According to them, the company had reproduced material from its legal research division, called Westlaw. The judge, inflexible. As they explain In Wiredthe defense arguments did not convince Judge Stephanos Bibas, of the Court of the District of Delaware. In his sentence he indicated that “none of Ross’s possible defenses is sustained. I reject them all.” Fair use, nothing. Normally IA companies are shielded in the doctrine of fair use (“Fair Use”). This legal criterion maintains that limited use of protected material is allowed without needing permission from the owner of those rights. As explained in Wiredel, four factors are analyzed: the reasons for creating the work, its nature (if it is an essay, a poem, a private letter), the amount of material used, and how that use impacts the market value of the original. Be careful for what copies. Thomson Reuters won two of those analyzes, but the fourth was for Judge Bibas the most important, because Ross “wanted to octize with Westlaw developing a substitute for the market.” That is: they were copied to try to compete with them in the same market. A precedent with a problem. Curiously Ross Intelligence closed its doors in 2021, precisely Faced with costs of the dispute. It is precisely the opposite with AI giants, who usually have many more economic resources when defending these types of demands. The legal precedent is undoubtedly relevant, but it may be more difficult to wield it if the litigation costs cannot be supported by the plaintiffs. Care, generative. The appearance of all kinds of generative models has unleashed a wave of demands for copyright violation. One of the most important cases is what The New York Times holds against Openaibut there are others like the one that affects Microsoft by Github Copilotthat of Stable Diffusion and Midjourney or the recent one Meta scandal and the books with copyright that he used to train his AI models. Fair use and competition. Precisely this judgment raises an important legal obstacle for AI companies. First, for that argument of the fair use that may now not work. And secondly, due to the fact that when using those works protected by copyright, the impact for the original works can be remarkable. Images | WIRESTOCK | Solen Feyissa In Xataka | Openai has used Copyright content to train its models: now it faces a wave of demands

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