takes

the Honor Robot Phone dances to your music as well as takes photos of you

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Over the years I have seen innovations that passed through mobile phones in a flash. The motorized cameras They were one of them: they became popular between 2018 and 2020 and then disappeared from the market as if they had not existed. Until Honor has arrived with his Robot Phonea phone that maximizes the bet of the original motorized cameras. The brand brought its latest innovations to Barcelona, ​​although the presentation had a bitter taste. The foldable Honor V6 It will still take a few months to arrive and the robotic mobile does not even have a date. Its state is experimental, it cannot be touched. It does allow you to invoke the camera using gestures. A gimbal tied to a smartphone Vivo has been including its gimbal mechanism in the X family for years, a three-axis stabilizer that simulates the stabilization accessory. But Honor’s bet is radically different, since the Robot Phone includes a authentic gimbal. And orchestrated with AI. The idea behind the phone is to offer automated photo and video taking without us having to worry about keeping the person in focus or following them. The Robot Phone can do all that without the need for extra accessories: the rear camera deploys when commanded. Either from the phone settings or by gestures: The front camera must recognize the palm of the hand, like the photo application does to take a selfie without touching the phone. Once the detection is made, an icon appears on the screen to notify you. At that moment you have to turn your hand so that the robot camera comes out. The robotic arm is activated by coming out of its rear socket and facing the user. The process between detection and the moment the camera is active takes about ten seconds. It’s not fast, it still needs some polishing. The gimbal of the robot camera consists of three axes with motors developed by Honor itself. The brand assures that they are the smallest in the world and that it has achieved reduce its size by 70% with respect to similar engines. The result of including this motorization is a very small, versatile and, according to Honor, very robust accessory. They use the experience and materials they already use in the hinges of the V-foldings. More than a camera Instantly attention-grabbing, you don’t expect a robotic arm to come out from behind a phone. That surprise ends up leading to empathy: Honor highlights the robot’s ability to interact with the user. For example, you can follow the rhythm of music by moving your head up and down. Or emphasize the conversation when we interact with the AI. Honor proposes different use cases for the phone. It is a camera that follows the action, that avoids shaking and that can pan without moving the mobile. In addition, it is capable of becoming a co-worker thanks to AI: it can become a work co-pilot. All thanks to Honor AI already Gemini. No specifications at the moment As a proof of concept, we still don’t know much more about its technical sheet other than that it has a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 as a processor and a 200 megapixel sensor for the robotic camera. The mobile has a solid construction (probably aluminum), straight edges and a screen that will not be far from 6.7 inches. It will be a premium range with all the law. It is a risky concept and I don’t quite see its more practical side, but the curious one. For video recording I think it’s an excellent idea, also for those who want to record everything: the Robot Phone can identify the environment and react to what it sees. AI action tracking is one of its best capabilities. It is still somewhat clumsy in practice, it is difficult to interact with the camera and You can see that the software is a bit green: The robotic camera did not always appear when making the hand gesture. And you had to close the capture application to try again. Live stuff. The return of motorized cameras under the protection of AI I remember having tested many mobile phones with cameras that were hidden in the phone to ensure that the entire screen surface was usable. He OPPO N3 He was one of the first, Asus Zenfone 6 It is another of the models that brings back the most memories: it allowed you to follow people taking advantage of the movement of the camera. The Honor Robot Phone has gone much further. It is a mobile phone that is unlike any other, at least for now. It offers different solutions to all those who use the phone to record video. And embrace the great presence that AI is having in all technological devices. Because, if robots are one step away from get to our housesthe advance could well be the Robot Phone. If the cell phone one day comes to make my bed, I’ll sign it. Images | Ivan Linares In Xataka | Best Honor phones in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and six recommended models

The 2026 Minotaur Prize takes a turn towards dark fantasy in Ancient Egypt with ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’

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This year the Prize celebrates a very special edition: twenty years since what has ended up becoming the most important award for fantasy literature in the Spanish language began to be awarded. This year the winner has been Africa Vázquez, who proposes with his novelto ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’ a dark fantasy story set in pharaonic Egypt that will go on sale next March 25. 216 manuscripts have competed for this edition of the award, mostly from Spain, in search of the 6,000 euro prize of which the award consists. The Minotaur is an award of international scope and this year proposals have come from countries throughout Latin America, especially Argentina and Mexico. Even so, the winner África Vázquez is from Zaragoza. She is not new to literary awards: her first novel already won, when she was only 17 years old, the Jordi Sierra i Fabra Prize. Since then he has published more than thirty books between Spain and Latin America, and has won various literary awards, including the Kelvin 505 at the Celsius 232 festival. In this work he has opted for travel to the remote past, with the story of a embalmer embarked on revenge which will take her to places as inhospitable as Waset, City of a Hundred Gates and capital of the Ta-Mri, with the intention of infiltrating the court of Pharaoh Nekht-en-sen. In ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’ you will discover that the secrets hidden in the heart of the Nile will not only shake the foundations of an empire. The earth rots, plagues come, and the secret behind it all seems to lie beyond the land of the living, in the depths of the Underworld. We are facing an epic and dark mythological fantasy story in a reinvented Egypt, where a priestess of the goddess Isis will plot revenge of ancient proportions. A dazzling journey The jury, made up of Sabino Cabeza (winner of the previous year), Laura Díaz (literary popularizer and writer), Fernando Bonete (university professor, author and prescriber), Judit Bertran (cultural journalist and editor of El Periódico) and Francesc Gascó (doctor in Paleontology and cultural popularizer) have praised Vázquez’s book. According to the jury, it offers a “millennial Egypt So carefully detailed you can even smell the embalmers’ ointment and the perfume of the lotuses of the Nile” Vázquez stated upon receiving the award that “in my novel I have poured all the passion I have felt for Ancient Egypt since my parents, at the age of thirteen, gave me the immense gift of taking me and my older sister to discover the wonders of the Nile. Later, when I had turned twenty-seven, I returned to sail through those ancient waters to receive another gift that would change my destiny.” The author assures that “perhaps that is why in ‘The Shadow of the Black Lotus’, a novel in which death and darkness are so present, there continues to be a light and a life that refuses to go out.” In Xataka | Conan has become an archetype and has survived for decades thanks to an unusual strategy: refusing to evolve

The Rafale takes advantage over the US F-35 and the Russian Su-57E

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India has launched one of the most ambitious military acquisition movements in recent years, a process that, due to its economic volume and strategic dimension, clearly transcends the national sphere and fully connects with the industrial and geopolitical balances that Europe observes. Although the decision still does not amount to a signed contract nor does it close all the technical details, it points a direction within a board where several powers were competing. In that initial context, France appears well positioned to occupy a central role if the next phases of the process progress as planned by the Indian authorities. On February 12, 2026, the Defense Acquisition Council chaired by Defense Minister Rajnath Singh granted the so-called “Acceptance of necessity” to a set of acquisition proposals valued at around Rs 3.60 lakh crore, a figure roughly equivalent to €33.5 billion. In the case of the Indian Air Force, this preliminary approval includes the purchase of MRFA (Multi Role Fighter Aircraft), identified as Rafale in the statement, in addition to combat missiles and a high-altitude aerial system intended for intelligence, surveillance and persistent reconnaissance. The move that can change India’s aerial balance It is advisable to stop at this administrative nuance because it defines the real scope of the advertisement. We are not facing a contractcalendars, final prices or closed technical configurations, but before a resource that authorizes the armed forces to begin the formal acquisition process within the approved budget framework. From there, commercial phases, technical negotiations and industrial adjustments usually begin that can last for months or even years before leading to a definitive signature. Beyond what was confirmed by the Indian Government, some specialized media provide additional elements that help outline the potential scope of the program. Defense News claims that the approved proposal would include the purchase of 114 Rafale. In any case, the institutional approval occurs a few days before French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the Indian capitala calendar that suggests the existence of political and industrial talks still developing. This possible French role cannot be understood without the competitive context in which the process has developed. The proposal linked to the Rafale coexisted with offers presented by The United States with its F-35 and Russia with the Su-57Etwo platforms that aspired to occupy the same space within the Indian aerial modernization program. To understand why this platform now occupies the center of the debate, it is worth briefly focusing on what exactly the Rafale is within the panorama of contemporary combat aviation. It is a twin-engine fighter conceived from its origin as a multirole aircraft, capable of operating from both land bases and aircraft carriers and taking on missions ranging from air superiority to reconnaissance or deep attacks. The device entered service with the French Navy in 2004 and with the Air Force in 2006, and has demonstrated its capabilities in real operations since 2007. Within this general architecture, the Rafale is not a single closed model, but a family of aircraft with a high degree of common elements and adaptations depending on the operating environment. Dassault Aviation distinguishes three configurations that share a cell and mission system, but respond to different needs for deployment, training and on-board use. Rafale C: single-seat version operated from land bases, designed for conventional combat missions within the air force. Rafale M: variant adapted to operations on aircraft carriers, with structural modifications such as reinforced landing gear and landing hook for naval use. Rafale B: two-seat configuration also based on land, used both for training and for missions that require workload sharing between two crew members. Beyond its external configuration, a good part of the Rafale’s international positioning is based on its technical capabilities. which describes its own manufacturer. Dassault Aviation maintains that the aircraft can take on a full spectrum of combat missions, from air superiority and defense to close support, reconnaissance, anti-ship strikes or nuclear deterrence, supported by a broad suite of sensors and systems such as digital flight control. fly-by-wire or the automatic terrain collision avoidance system. Specifying which aircraft the Indian Air Force would actually receive remains, for the moment, an open question. In this sense, it is necessary to point out that there is no official public detail that confirms the specific version of the Rafale or the exact set of systems and weapons that would accompany a possible order. Where there is a greater definition is in the naval field. The agreement for the Indian Navy includes 26 devices of the M variant. Another important fact is that India already operates 36 Rafales incorporated since 2020 and deployed in different bases. As we can see, the current photograph combines indications of a strategic inclination with a still open process, where the final signature and definitive configuration are still pending negotiation. Images | Dylan Agbagni (CC0 1.0 Universal) | Dassault Aviation In Xataka | A strange night noise was disturbing Alcalá de Henares’ sleep. Until the mystery was solved

It takes away flights, but gives it 500 million to fix engines

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Ryanair is advancing the project of its future engine repair workshop in Seville with an investment of more than 500 million euros. Just like account ABC, the Irish airline, has signed a multi-year parts supply agreement with CFM International valued at around €800 million annually. This is good news for the Andalusian capital, and it would be even better if it were not for the fact that the same company also restructured its operations to eliminate several routes in Seville. industrial project. Ryanair is preparing an entire industrial infrastructure that will turn Seville into one of its two strategic maintenance centers in Europe. We don’t know its exact location yet, but the company says it will be operational by 2029 and will support the fleet operating in Western Europe. It will not be the only one either, since Ryanair will build a second similar workshop in a city in the eastern part of Europe, still to be determined. According to share From ABC, both facilities will allow the company to internally assume the maintenance of almost 2,000 engines of its Boeing 737, a task that until now was carried out by CFM International in centers outside Europe. The agreement with CFM International. The memorandum signed with the French-American manufacturer (50% owned by Safran Aircraft Engines and GE Aerospace), commits Ryanair to directly acquire all its spare parts to support a fleet that will grow to 800 aircraft, according to share the middle. The contract covers the CFM56-7B and LEAP-1B engines that equip the Boeing 737 Next Generation and the 737 MAX. Once the workshops are operational, the value of the agreement will exceed 1 billion dollars annually (839 million euros), according to CEO Michael O’Leary. Adding more industry. As well as mention In the middle, the repair center project adds to the heavy maintenance hangar that Ryanair has operated since 2019 next to the São Paulo airport, where it carries out comprehensive inspections of up to five aircraft simultaneously. However, both facilities will be separated. The hangar will focus exclusively on complete aircraft maintenance, while the new workshop will focus only on mechanical repair and engine supervision. According to share From ABC, it is expected that the infrastructure will have a useful life of at least 30 years. Route cutting. Not everything that Ryanair brings is good news for Seville, as the city will lose seven air connections this summer. São Paulo airport will go from 56 routes operated by the Irish airline to 49 destinations. Among the eliminated connections are Santiago de Compostela, Gran Canaria and Tenerife North in the national market, in addition to Weeze-Dusseldorf, Nuremberg, Frankfurt Hahn and Vienna in the international market. This withdrawal of operations at Spanish regional airports is no surprise. Ryanair focuses on its strategy reduce your operations in those airports that it considers “non-competitive” due to their airport taxes. The airline has eliminated 1.2 million seats in three consecutive cuts in the country’s regional airports, redistributing that capacity to markets such as Albania, Italy, Morocco, Slovakia and Sweden. The closure of bases in other Spanish airports indirectly affects Seville, according to explained the company to ABC, by eliminating connections that departed from those cities. cpartial compensation. Despite the reduction in destinations, Ryanair will add 17 weekly frequencies on 12 existing routes from Seville. Lisbon will add three new flights, Birmingham, Manchester and Bologna will add two each, while Edinburgh, Brussels, Catania, Bergamo, Milan Malpensa, Pisa, Ibiza and Valencia will add an additional weekly flight. Furthermore, just as share From ABC, the airline will add two routes with Poland this summer: Krakow and Wrocław. The weight of Ryanair in Seville. The Irish airline operates 40% of the air connections at this airport and one of every four planes that leave the terminal is its own. Just like account ABC, in 2025, transported four million passengers from São Paulo, an increase of 1,900% compared to the 200,000 20 years ago, when it began operating in the city. Cover image | Kevin Hackert In Xataka | “It’s inhumane”: a Canadian low-cost airline is already experimenting with ultra-narrow seats for its passengers

Amancio Ortega takes Pontegadea’s logistics business further than ever: to Australia

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In its efforts to expand the reach and diversification of its logistics businessAmancio Ortega, is leaving our antipodes, to buy a significant stake in an Australian logistics giant. This operation represents Pontegadea’s first entry into the Australian continent and strengthens the investment arm strategy of Ortega in the global logistics sector, an area that the millionaire has proven to control very well since it is the key to Inditex expansion as a global fashion giant. The Australian adventure of Amancio Ortega. According to information of Financial Review Spanish magnate, through his family office Pontegadeais going to join a group of investors led by the Macquarie Asset Management fund, to present a purchase proposal for 100% of the Australian technology giant. Qube logistics. The operation values ​​the company at 11.6 billion Australian dollars, which is equivalent to about 6.9 billion euros. This offer involves paying 28% more for each Qube share than the price at which it was trading just before the first proposal was made known. The purchase would be made through an agreement approved by shareholders at a meeting, without the need for a traditional public purchase offer process. Macquarie already owns 18.4% of the company, so the operation would ensure control of the rest of the shareholders. His first operation in Australia. This is the first investment that Pontegadea makes outside Europe or USAand is committed to addressing it by diversifying its logistics business. As is customary every time Pontegadea faces a new challenge, it does so from a conservative profile staying in the backgroundletting its partners take the initiative in direct management. On this occasion, the operation is led by the consortium formed by Macquarie, which includes other investment funds such as UniSuper, Brighter Super and Mercer. The intention with this purchase is to take advantage of Qube’s position in the Australian and New Zealand supply chain to expand into Asia, where trade is growing. Qube Business. Sydney-based Qube is the largest import and export logistics operator in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. It is responsible for storing goods, managing ports, distributing containers by road and manufacturing transport equipment, in addition to providing services to sectors such as mining, energy and construction. The purchase of this company coincides with Pontegadea’s recent investments in the port operatorsand logistics warehouses, but it opens a new investment door, bringing the company closer to the import and export business with Asia. Previous investments in logistics. Although this is its first foray into Australia, Pontegadea has already invested significantly in logistics assets in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. In October 2025 bought a logistics center of 80,000 square meters in the vicinity of Liverpool, leasing to Amazon, for 81 million euros. In addition, Pontegadea acquired a portfolio of warehouses and logistics platforms in Europe and the United States for more than 900 million dollars, and entered the British port business with the purchase of 49% of PD Ports. These operations show a clear commitment to diversifying Pontegadea’s portfolio towards logistics infrastructures in different countries, and not focusing only on real estate investments. In Xataka | Amancio Ortega has been donating millions of euros to Spanish hospitals for years. The question is if there is something more fundamental Image | GTRES, Unsplash (Nathan Cima)

AI saves us time but takes away the story

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A few days ago I surprised myself doing something that five years ago would have seemed sacrilege. I had in front of me one of those reports that you save to read on Sunday morning. 5,000 words, a prestigious signature and a great design. A text of those who ask for calm. And when I didn’t even have two sentences, I instinctively looked for the ‘summary’ button that now crown my browser. Nine lines. That was the whole summary. It was not for lack of interest, it was rather for that modern urgency that whispers to us that spending twenty minutes on a single idea is an inefficient thing. After a quarter of an hour I remembered almost nothing of those nine lines. I had the information, but I didn’t have the knowledge. We are turning reading into an administrative procedure. What started as a survival tool to deal with the deluge of work emails or some long-winded Reddit threads has colonized our capacity for wonder. In 2026, AI not only helps us write, it also is teaching us not to read. Or even worse: it is convincing us that the path is a hindrance to reaching the destination. It is the definitive victory of the TLDR about curiosity. The problem with outsourcing digestion is that we start from a false premise: that the substance of things is the only thing that matters. But in culture, information or in a simple conversation, substance is sometimes the least important thing. Ask an AI to summarize Don Quixote for you and it will tell you that it’s like a man from La Mancha who has read too much and confuses windmills with giants. You have the information, but you have not heard the conversations with Sancho on the roads. You have not felt the bitterness on the beach in Barcelona nor the lucidity of someone who regains their sanity to realize that the world, without its madness, is a gray place. Technology, in its efforts to eliminate friction (paradoxically, being the one who has blocked our notifications) is taking away the fabric of our experience. Silences and nuances are what fixes memory. The horny thing is What are we using that time for that we supposedly save by not reading?r. It is not to think deeply or to walk around without a cell phone and hit the coconut, but to consume even more summaries. It’s a loop infinity (pun intended) empty efficiency. We optimize the consumption of information to be able to ingest more information, which in turn we summarize in the next scroll. Thus we become archivists of a life that we did not get to witness. We save, synthesize and archive, but we do not inhabit anything. We are reaching a phase in which the true status, the intellectual luxury of our era, is not to be very smart or to be up to date with everything thanks to our AI agent, but in be able to sustain attention. Prestige belongs to those who can afford the extravagance of reading a text from beginning to end, of listening to a podcast without skipping the silences or set it to 1.75x. Or finishing watching a movie without having used your cell phone for two hours. Efficiency is a great metric for an assembly line or an AWS server, but If we let it guide the leisure of a human life, we are making ourselves a little miserable. We start by optimizing each minute to end up leaving everything in a list of three key points. Or in a nine-line summary. But life cannot be summarized. In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were Featured image | Xataka

If your Madrid-Barcelona train now takes five hours, Renfe and Iryo have a message: there is no compensation

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What used to be two and a half hours has become recurring trips of more than four hours. The Madrid-Barcelona line lives between speed limitations that are multiplying travel times. Adif is working hard to correct the alleged defects on the road. And, in the middle, some passengers who bought a ticket that promised a 150-minute trip that is now impossible to fulfill and who are not going to receive a single euro in compensation. The Madrid-Barcelona line. Since the occurrence of fateful train accident in Adamuz (Córdoba)the Madrid-Barcelona line is in focus. After months of complaints from train drivers, and self-imposed speed limitations, as they have confirmed to XatakaAdif strives to review all avenues to verify that there are no defects or, if there are, fix them. The company in charge of managing and maintaining the roads began applying temporary speed restrictions in the most controversial sections. These limitations they rose and applied punctually in the days following the Andalusian accident, with the vibrations being the focus of controversy. More, many more. As the days go by, the controversy has grown. To the reviews of Adif facilities a storm has joined which has complicated the service even more. The result: trains that were supposed to take 150 minutes between Madrid and Barcelona have been arriving regularly after four and a half hours. The latest news is that Adif has asked Renfe, Ouigo and Iryo to eliminate the last services of each day in order to be able to work for a greater number of hours and reduce the planned days of track inspection. These works will study the complaints reported by the train drivers and, if necessary, fix the damage on the tracks if the technicians consider that intervention is necessary, they point out in The World. No compensation. These warnings from the train drivers and the subsequent reviews by Adif are what are causing the continuous delays in the journeys. Delays that, however, will not be compensated by Renfe and Iryo, companies that already report on their websites that this situation does not fall within the reasons for returning a ticket partially or in its entirety. So much Renfe as Iryo They emphasize that these delays are unrelated to the service provided by the operators and, therefore, will not be reimbursed. In the case of the Italian company, this decision affects tickets purchased after January 28, while in the case of Renfe it will not be a reason for refunds for tickets purchased after January 31. An exception. What travelers from these companies do have the right to be relocated to another shift by the operator if their trains have been canceled as a result of Adif’s latest request. In the case of Renfe, which has issued its decision in statements that it has collected The Countrythe trains to relocate those affected will be of double composition to double the number of seats and the possibility of canceling the trip has been opened at no cost to the traveler. A new controversy. These delays and the decision not to compensate travelers, understanding that they are due to reasons unrelated to their services, deepen the controversies that have been surrounding railway compensation for months. And Renfe, by order of Congresshas the obligation to compensate again for delays of more than 15 minutes and return the money if the train arrives 30 minutes above the scheduled time. These deadlines were extended to 60 and 90 minutes respectively. in 2024 and They should have returned to their original deadlines in 2026 but this has not happened yet. Photo | trenduck and Renfe In Xataka | Spain has put so many passengers on the train that the Government is already toying with an idea: that we travel standing

The time it takes to get to a highway anywhere in Spain, on a revealing map

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Faced with the pressing housing problem in Spain In large cities, one of the simplest solutions for those who can afford it is to leave stressed centers such as Madrid or Barcelona in search of more accessible municipalities and properties. How much? It depends on your budget, what your work is like and what the destination location offers you in such objective terms as services and infrastructure. And there is one essential to move: the distance to a main road. I speak with knowledge of the facts: this was a key factor when choosing a municipality to buy an apartment months ago. My new location has direct access to the highway and getting from there to my trusted padel club in Pamplona is 10 minutes longer than doing it from my old apartment, located in the center of the Navarrese capital. Although it is not ideal, my pocket has appreciated it and the sacrifice is profitable for me. Now, having chosen an idyllic municipality in the Navarrese Pyrenees would have been a very bad idea in terms of mobility (although bucolic on days like today). That was my personal decision, but given the prices, I know that I am not alone: ​​from buying in the capital to doing so in a municipality in the province there are price variations of up to 131% in Madrid or 126% in Álava, according to the latest Idealista study that collects La Razón. Because if the price of the property in Villagónadas de Abajo is the lowest in the province but it is where Cristo lost his lighter, already such. Well yes: the price differences are abysmal and the communications are too. An x-ray of territorial inequality and Spanish orography This map created by Digital Cartography With data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, this is evident. The cartography collects the minutes by car to a highway or highway from a good part of the Spanish state (if there are no this type of roads, as happens in Ceuta or Melilla for example, then they do not appear) with information from 2022. To see everything in a more intuitive way, they have used the colors of the traffic light, where green is what can cost you up to 20 minutes and red goes from one hour to 133 minutes in the maroon areas. The access time to a highway or highway in Spain. Digital cartography with data from the Ministry If we superimposed a physical map with a demographic one we would find a clear diagnosis of red zones in critical areas such as the Asturian massif and the Pyrenees, the muga with Portugal (especially in Zamora, Salamanca and western Extremadura), the Iberian System and the maximum expression of “Empty Spain” in the south of Teruel, the north of the basin and areas of Guadalajara or the Betic Systems. We know that in communications Spain It is a centralized state with Madrid as the nerve center and the lines of these main roads, although they do not appear on the map, can be intuited. Without going any further, it is not too difficult to imagine where the A-2 goes to Barcelona or the A-6 to A Coruña. That is the first clue as to why we find such an uneven map: the radial network model, which leaves enormous gaps in peripheral areas that are not linked to large state/European corridors. Obviously the extreme orography of the Pyrenees or the Iberian System makes construction difficult on a technical and economic level (it is not that it is not possible to lay out viaducts or tunnels, it is that it makes the cost skyrocket), but the Average Daily Intensity mandates: for a public work to be approved there is a cost-benefit analysis and if an area has a low population density, the ADI is low, making it difficult to justify the investment. On the other hand, there are environmental restrictions: some of these red zones coincide with national parks or protected areas. In this scenario, obtain a Environmental Impact Statement (mandatory in projects of this magnitude) is an impossible mission. The small print. Something that I greatly appreciated when I returned to Navarra is that there is no traffic… compared to Madrid. The rush hour for leaving work or school may be noticeable in a few minutes of delay, but it is light years away from the traffic jams that I have had to suffer in return or bridge operations when I lived in the state capital. Because although in Madrid almost everything is green, in practice those minutes correspond to a distance traveled respecting the limits of the road and assuming fluid traffic. In Xataka | This is the DGT map to visualize where there are active V-16 beacons in Spain. There is another more useful unofficial map In Xataka | Europe’s passenger car industry, in a revealing map that makes it clear who is the real “engine” of the EU Cover | Digital cartography

China has a solution that only takes 0.1 seconds

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In the age of electricity, time is no longer measured in minutes, but in milliseconds. As Fatih Birol explainsexecutive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world has fully entered a new era where electricity consumption grows twice as fast as general energy demand. However, this advance has an “Achilles heel”: network stability. Renewable energy, although necessary, is inherently unstable. The great fear of operators is that a small failure in a network saturated with solar and wind energy will cause a domino effect that ends in a total collapse. Faced with this scenario, China has deployed technology capable of detecting, isolating and recovering the network from a failure in just 0.1 seconds. From hours of darkness to the blink of an eye. Historically, managing power grid failures was a slow and manual process. As a South China Morning Post report recallsrestoring power after a community blackout typically required between 6 and 10 hours of work. That year, China already marked a milestone by testing an artificial intelligence system that reduced that time to 3 seconds. However, that is no longer enough. The recent achievement of 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds) It is the result of a collaboration of more than a decade between elite universities (Tianjin and Shandong), the state corporation State Grid and automation specialists such as Beijing Sifang Automation. This technology is not only faster, but is capable of identifying “micro-currents” of just 100 milliamps, almost invisible faults that previously went unnoticed until it was too late. “Self-healing” versus intermittency. The fundamental problem, detailed in the study published in Energy Informaticsis that modern networks are much more complex. The massive incorporation of renewables and extreme weather conditions make traditional diagnostic methods based on static rules fail due to lack of precision and adaptability. This advancement means that the Chinese power grid —the largest in the worldwith projected consumption in 2025 of more than 10 billion kWh—is moving from a reactive system to a “self-healing” one (self-healing). This capability is so strategic that China already has exported the technology to 12 nationsconsolidating its influence not only as a panel manufacturer, but as the architect of global electrical safety. The algorithms behind the miracle. To understand how this speed is achieved, we must look at academic study by Qi Guo and his team. The system is supported by a dual structure of intelligent algorithms: Fault Location Algorithm (FLA): Uses a fault classifier Support Vector Machine (SVM) with a radial basis function (RBF) kernel. This “brain” analyzes variables such as voltage, line impedance and weather conditions to predict with 92% accuracy where exactly the problem has occurred. Fault Isolation Algorithm (FIA): Once the critical point is located, a decision tree logic comes into play that evaluates the severity. According to the research, if the fault is critical (such as a short circuit near a substation), the system orders the immediate isolation of that section and redirects the energy along alternative routes almost instantly. This hybrid approach allows the system to learn from historical data and adapt to dynamic conditions, something that conventional distance protection systems simply cannot do as effectively. The new geopolitical battlefield. The energy transition not only redefines how energy is produced, but also who controls the rules of the new industrial system. While the West focuses its response on ensuring the supply of critical minerals through initiatives such as ReSourceEU, China advances in less visible terrain but more decisive: the standardization, digitalization and integration of the infrastructures that will sustain the low-carbon economy. Rather than competing for resources, the dispute revolves around who designs the technological architecture on which global growth will function. The ability to recover a network in 0.1 seconds is not just a technical record; It is the life insurance of a highly electrified economy. The greatest current risk is that this clash of strategies between powers ends slowing decarbonization. However, in the race for stability, China has shown that while the rest of the world continues to search for the switch in the dark, they have already designed a system that never lets the light go out. Image | Unsplash Xataka | China dominates the world of renewable energy, but it has an Achilles heel: it depends on the West more than it admits

Neuroscience explains why the brain takes much longer to mature than we thought

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The idea we have about adolescence right now it ends at 25 years old, this being the age at which supposedly the brain has just been ‘cooked’ forever to give way to a functional adult. But the reality is very different as the new studies point out, since we would continue to mature the brain until at least 32 years old. Where did the current idea come from? To understand why scientists pointed to 25 years as the age at which brain maturity ends, we must go back to studies of the past. Specifically to Resonance studies from the 90s and early 2000s like the classic Nitin Gogtay who mapped brain development and discovered that the cortex matures from “back to front.” This means that the sensory and motor areas are consolidated soon, but the prefrontal cortex which is in charge of executive functions, impulse control and planning is last in line. The problem is that many of those studies stopped following the subjects when you reach 20 or 21 years oldsince seeing that the curve continued to rise, it was assumed that the “peak” of maturity would arrive shortly after, around the mid-20s. But we had no idea what happened after this. Just assumptions. A new frontier. In order to solve this ‘blindness’ of neuroscience used the analysis of more than 4,000 brains using connectivity neuroimaging techniques at the University of Cambridge. What they saw was clearly five ‘epochs’ or milestones in brain wiring throughout life. Different turning points. And as if our life were a game, in the brain we have like five different screens that begin at a specific age that acts as a turning point. These ages are: 9, 32, 66 and 83 years. What interests us in this case is the period between 9 and 32 years, since the brain is characterized by a continuous increase in the efficiency and integration of neural networks. It is what the authors describe as an ‘extended adolescence’. It’s not that at 30 you think the same as a 15-year-old, but that the architecture of connections has not yet reached its final ‘adult’ form. Something that occurs at age 32 and remains stable until age 66, when brain activity begins to decline. To understand it better. Researchers wanted to use a simile to illustrate this new paradigm. To do this, they ask us to think of our brain as the union of several “functional neighborhoods” that specialize in specific tasks such as vision, language or logic. All of these are integrated with each other through different highways that are high-speed connections. Well then, between 20 and 32 years old The brain is balancing these two processes, so that the connections between different areas of the brain are well connected and organized. And it is precisely this typical pattern of the adult network, where the brain is capable of integrating complex information fluidly, which does not appear until after the age of thirty. Teenager at 30? This is where the important nuance comes in. Just because the brain continues to mature structurally does not mean that we should redefine adolescence in legal or clinical terms. All this because maturation is a gradient, not a switch of ‘now I’m a teenager and now I’m not’. To understand this, you have to know that the different elements of the brain and executive functions have a very different development curve. In this way, saying that the brain matures at 32 is a simplification that is as useful (or as erroneous) as saying that it matures at 25. What science really tells us is that there is no sudden development “blackout”; We remain biologically plastic and dynamic much longer than we thought. An opportunity for habits. This prolonged maturation is good news for all of us, since if the brain continues to actively ‘wire’ itself throughout our 20s, it means that structural plasticity is especially dynamic at this stage. In this way, science is quite clear: aerobic exercise, learning new languages ​​or facing cognitively demanding tasks during this “third decade” of life helps to improve the volume and organization of the brain’s white matter. On the contrary, factors such as chronic stress can affect the integrity of those connections. In short, a brain at 28 years old is not a finished product, but rather a work in progress that is finishing paving its best highways. The next time someone tells you that you should have your life figured out now because “you’re an adult,” you can tell them that, according to the University of Cambridge, your brain still has a couple of years of baking left. Images | Hal Gatewood Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | From 27 to 36 years old the brain reaches its peak concentration. And from there, bad news

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