testing

Sony is already testing it in the PS Store

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Since November 2025, Sony is carrying out in relative silence an experiment with the final prices of your games– Different users see different prices for the same game on the PlayStation Store. What started with 50 titles in 30 regions now covers more than 150 games in 68 countries. At the moment, the company continues to say nothing on the subject. Crazy prices. The first sign came when a Reddit user He noticed that his wife saw a lower price than his for the same game on the PlayStation Store. The gap was too large to be a rounding error by region. No one knew if it was a technical failure or something deliberate, until Pspricesa website that monitors PlayStation Store price history in more than 50 regions, found the answer in Sony’s own infrastructure: identifiers embedded in the store’s API responses, with labels like IPT_PILOT and IPT_OPR_TESTING. We are facing a controlled test. How testing works. Sony randomly assigns users to a control group or a test group. Those in the test group see different prices. According to the data collected by the site, all experimental prices detected so far are lower than the official price, with discounts ranging between 5.3% and 17.6%. ‘WWE 2K25’ is listed at €61.82 for some compared to the standard €74.99. ‘God of War Ragnarök’ and ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ drop from €79.99 to €69.99 for certain users. ‘Astro Bot’, from €69.99 to €61.16. There are extreme cases like ‘Helldivers 2’, which reached a 56% discount. What Sony measures is the price elasticity of demand: to what extent price determines the purchase decision of each user profile. Evolution of the experiment. The program began in November 2025 with about 50 games in approximately 30 regions. Three months later, according to Psprices data, it covers more than 150 titles in 68 regions including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The expansion itself is already a sign that the test is yielding data that interests Sony, and it is striking that the company has included its own AAA franchises in the experiment, such as the aforementioned games. It means that Sony considers it necessary to measure price sensitivity even in games where demand seemed guaranteed. Two territories (the United States and Japan) are outside the experiment, and the possible cause is stricter regulation and greater market sensitivity in both countries. Why now. A look at Sony’s financial context may shed some light on why this decision has been made. According to the company financial report Through December 2025, PS5 shipments fell 15.7% year-over-year in the Christmas quarter, with hardware revenue down 15.1%. CFO Lin Tao spoke of “monetizing the console installed base” as a priority. With 80% of software sales already in digital format, it is important to find a way to boost PlayStation Store sales. That store also operates without the competitive pressures of PC (market that Sony seems to be abandoning), where the user can buy the same game at different prices on Steam, GOG or many other stores. On PlayStation, the ecosystem is closed: there are no authorized third-party distributors, there are no game codes in physical stores as is the case with Xbox and Nintendo. If Sony controls the discounts and customizes them per user, whoever wants that game on PS5 only has one way to access it. The terror of dynamic pricing. To the user These types of policies do not suit him well. Airlines, hotels, vacation rental platforms or mobility services like Uber adjust rates in real time according to demand, time or area. The controversy has reached the world of concert tickets, with demands included. In video games, there is also an extra issue: on a plane, a hotel or a concert venue there is a real limitation on the tickets that can be sold. The inventory of a digital game is, by definition, unlimited. What Sony is going to do is called in economics “first degree price discrimination“and that is what has generated the main user complaints. Although there are no official statements about Sony’s plans, the truth is that the company, for the moment, has not raised prices above the official RRP, but rather has offered discounts based on various criteria that have not yet been revealed. Some bets: Users with less purchasing history could receive greater incentives to encourage them to spend. Thus, the question remains whether we are dealing with a discount for those who do not usually buy or a premium for those who usually do. If the promotion escalates, we’ll eventually find out. In Xataka | Playstation 6: all the information we know (or think we know) so far

Xiaomi is testing the mother of AIs for its cars, mobile phones and home. And there is no trace of Google or OpenAI

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Xiaomi long ago stopped being simply a mobile brand and became one of the giants of the Chinese technology ecosystem. The company It no longer goes to volume, it goes to aspirationand to achieve this they want a remarkable user experience. A deep integration of artificial intelligence is inevitable to achieve this, and that is where MiClaw comes to life. Mike? Xiaomi has published on its website the details about MiClaw, your next step in exploring AI agents. It begins as a small-scale closed test, but it represents the pillars of what we will see in the near future on the company’s devices. What is. Xiaomi is testing with MiClaw the execution capabilities of its large AI models (MiMo) within the mobile-car-home ecosystem, both at the conversational level and in terms of execution capacity. It is a deep model, one with full access to every single event on the device, and able to reason for itself what action needs to be taken. What are you doing. The agentic AI prepared by Xiaomi follows a four-step model: Perception Association Decision Action In the text itself, Xiaomi gives us some examples of how its agent can make our lives easier. A refrigerator that can automatically check which consumables are missing at home, connect to our calendar and create a reminder that we have to make the purchase. You buy a train ticket, the agent reads the confirmation SMS, consults our calendar, and automatically prepares and schedules the trip. Why is it important. That Xiaomi is redoubling its efforts in AI is no coincidence. The company wants to be a benchmark in the ecosystem and conquer regions like Europe. Leading in artificial intelligence will be key for any of its product pillars: cars, home devices and mobile phones. Xiaomi wants to move away from the current interpretation-execution proposal, to integrate an agent capable of carrying out up to 20 consecutive and independently executed actions. At the moment, MiClaw works under closed beta on devices like the Xiaomi 17 Ultrabut Xiaomi’s idea is to develop an agent capable of working on any of its devices. Image | Xataka In Xataka | Is the newest the best for you? We compare the Xiaomi 17 Ultra against the Xiaomi 15 Ultra to see which is a better buy in 2026

We are not used to seeing traffic cones that place themselves. They are already testing them in China

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A traffic cone that rolls out of the emergency vehicle alone, is placed in position and forms a safety perimeter before any operator has set foot on the asphalt. It is not a scene that we usually see in our parts, but the truth is that in China they are already testing it and its operation is tremendously interesting. What is happening. Emergency teams in China are testing autonomous traffic cones capable of securing the perimeter of an accident in less than ten seconds. Such as describe Marc Theermann, director of strategy at Boston Dynamics, in a post on LinkedIn, these robots leave directly from the emergency vehicle and move alone to their position, forming a safety barrier without any operator having to cross the road. They can be activated remotely or operate completely autonomously. Click on the image to go to the post The hook: the safety of the operators. Placing cones by hand on a road with active traffic is a truly dangerous task for operators in charge of road maintenance, or those carrying out work on the road. The idea with this technology is simply to eliminate or reduce as much as possible the human presence in the most vulnerable phase of any road intervention. How they work. Researchers from the Center for Research in Technologies, Energy and Industrial Processes of Pontevedra (CINTECX) published a study in 2025 in the magazine Infrastructures that described the design and validation of its “Remotely Piloted Safety Cone”, a robotic system with a similar architecture. The device combines autonomous GPS navigation with RTK correction (a high-precision positioning system), odometry sensors, an inertial measurement unit and ultrasonic obstacle detection. All of this managed by an autopilot and an on-board computer that coordinates movement in real time. The results of the study showed that the most precise configuration managed to stay less than 20 centimeters from the planned route, a more than acceptable margin for this type of operations. Faster than by hand. According to that same studythe estimated placement time per cone with this system is around three seconds, compared to the seven or eight seconds it takes on average for a human operator. In an intervention that requires dozens of cones, the difference is quite significant, especially if this is then combined with systems that can be placed simultaneously and not one after another. And also at night. Best of all, the task can also make it much easier to place cones when there is barely any visibility. And the robotic cones incorporate lighting, something basic for any type of emergency road signage. In Spain we already propose the “less intelligent” version. After the V16 beaconswhich have given a lot to talk about (more for the bad which for the good), the DGT has also explored the use of connected coneswhich would be responsible for notifying in real time of road works or dangers. They would be integrated into the DGT 3.0 platformalong with the V16 beacon, although they are still in the testing phase and very far from implementation. The main difference, as you might expect, is that these cones do not move or position themselves. But it’s already a step. What comes next. The natural step of this technology is not the individual cone, but rather several can be coordinated at the same time, something that we have already seen in tests in China, and that the deployment is reminiscent of that of the drone shows in the sky (less glamorous, but just as addictive to watch). The researchers they point in his study of multi-agent swarms, several robots working together in a coordinated manner, such as the evolution of this technology to apply it in infrastructures. Cover image | Posting on X In Xataka | A company has filled a neighborhood with sidewalk outlets to charge electric cars. Their results are contradictory

The US was convinced that China was testing nuclear weapons, and now it has proof

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Washington and Moscow maintained an unwritten rule which has now been broken: if a test was carried out, the world had to find out. For decades, the global strategic balance was sustained by fragile agreements, mutual distrust and red lines that no one wanted to openly cross. When those limits have started to fadeeven the slightest hint can alter the stability that seemed guaranteed. This is how the accusations begin nuclear. A tremor reopens the ghost. The story we tell it last week, but now, a priori, there is more data to support Washington’s rhetoric. The United States has toughened its accusation that China conducted an underground nuclear test low-yield on June 22, 2020 near Lop Nur, Xinjiang, supporting in detected seismic data by a station in Kazakhstan that recorded an event of approximate magnitude 2.75. Washington maintains something that for them is evidence: that the signal cannot fit with an earthquake or mining explosions, and that Beijing would have used “decoupling” techniques to dampen the seismic signal and make detection more difficult, although it admits that it cannot precisely determine the performance of the supposed detonation. The treaty that does not bind. The background of everything is the Treaty of the Complete Ban on Nuclear Tests of 1996, the same one that prohibits nuclear explosions but has never fully come into force due to lack of ratifications, despite the fact that the great powers claim to respect its initial spirit. For its part, the international supervisory body detected two small seismic events separated by 12 seconds on the indicated date, but also recognized that They were too weak to attribute them with complete certainty to a nuclear explosion, which leaves the dispute in a technical field where the public evidence is, to say the least, ambiguous. Strategic pressure without New START. The accusation comes after expiration of the last treaty that limited the strategic arsenals of the United States and Russia, and at a time when the Trump administration seeks to promote a new agreement that also include China. From that perspective, publicly detailing the alleged test can function as diplomatic leverage to force Beijing to sit down to negotiate. At the same time, it serves to Washington to open another perhaps more disturbing scenario: to warn that it will not accept to sit idly by what it has called an “intolerable disadvantage” if others carry out low-yield tests while the United States maintains its moratorium in force since 1992. In other words, whether it was a real nuclear test or not, the powers seem be taking positions now that there are no pacts involved. The debate about pressing the button. In fact, Trump has hinted that the United States could resume tests “on equal terms” if China and Russia are also carrying them out, a possibility that worries arms control experts who fear breaking the post-Cold War taboo and trigger a new test race. The discussion, therefore, is not only technical, but political: if Washington responds with its own detonations, it could legitimize other powers to do the same, eroding decades of informal containment. Nuclear balance in transformation. Although the Chinese arsenal (estimated around 600 warheads) is still lower than that of Russia and the United States, its rapid expansion It worries Washington, which interprets any low-yield tests as part of a strategy to modernize and perfect its nuclear force. Beijing denies having crossed the line and defends that it respects its moratorium. And, meanwhile, the debate over clandestine testing reveals an increasingly fragile international system, one where distrust and opacity technology weigh almost as much as the weapons themselves. Image | Planet Labs, Google Earth In Xataka | Satellite images leave no room for doubt: China’s nuclear renaissance is already visible from space In Xataka | The United States is convinced that China is conducting nuclear tests. The problem is that you can’t prove it.

There are people capable of testing positive in a breathalyzer test without having drunk a drop of alcohol. And we already know why

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Although it may seem crazy, failing a breathalyzer test after drinking only water and a plate of pasta is possible. And while explaining it that way to a police officer may raise questions about a poor excuse, The truth is that it is a medical reality for those who suffer from the known self-fermentation syndrome. The investigation. Until now we attributed this problem to yeast, but a team of researchers from UC San Diego and Massachusetts General Hospital has identified specific strains of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae as those responsible for generate intoxicating levels of ethanol in the intestineopening the door to treatments as surprising as fecal transplantation. That is, there are bacteria that can literally make us drunk without drinking a drop of alcohol. The metabolic storm. To reach this conclusion, the study analyzed to 22 patients diagnosed with this metabolic problem, comparing them with 21 healthy relatives. In this case, the results were quite compelling, because fecal samples from patients in the midst of the outbreak were capable of endogenously producing ethanol at alarming levels. In order to know much more, These samples were cultured and an ethanol concentration of up to 136 mg/dl was observed.. To put it in context, in many countries the legal limit for driving around 50 mg/dl in bloodso these patients without drinking would be doubling the level of alcohol permitted while driving. An alcohol factory. The novelty of this study is that it shifts the focus from yeast to bacteria, since genomic analyzes showed a massive enrichment of genes related to mixed acid fermentation. But we must not fall for the statement that these bacteria are ‘bad’, but rather that the ecosystem is broken to give rise to this problem. And what is the trigger? The antibiotics. And the use of these drugs can sweep away the balanced flora, allowing opportunistic pathogens to take control of the intestine and begin to metabolize sugars into alcohol. The treatment. Logically, this is a serious problem, not because of the fact of testing positive in the alcohol test, but because of the toxicity that the body faces. That is why the objective right now is on the treatment that now has the focus on a fecal microbiota transplant. For this study, the donor of his fecal microbiota was a personal trainer with enviable intestinal health. And the result was incredible, since the patient with this problem saw these problems disappear permanently, and his ability to “self-produce” alcohol disappeared after repopulating his intestine with the healthy bacteria of another person. Beyond getting drunk. As we have said before, it may seem ideal to have a feeling of intoxication without having to spend a single euro on a drink, but the reality is that this problem also leads to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And constantly producing alcohol can cause very serious liver damage. But on the social issue, this endogenous overproduction of ethanol has led people to lose their driving license or face labor problems unfairly. All for a problem that may seem like the perfect excuse, but is actually a major medical problem. Images | Lawrence Krowdeed In Xataka | There is an age at which we should stop drinking alcohol forever. Neuroscience is clear why

Testing the first light bulb in 1879, Edison came across a material that would be discovered 125 years later: the prodigious graphene.

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Edison has been one of the most prolific inventors of history. In fact, while he was looking for a way to make the light bulb, he carried out an exhaustive materials science experiment: tried more than 6,000 organic materials before decant by the carbonized bamboo filament. eye to the old patent no. 223,898 because it has all the necessary ingredients for the recipe. Tremendous Edison spoiler. He had, without knowing it, set up a primitive nanotechnological reactor to obtain graphene. That same graphene on which Philip Russell Wallace would theorize 20 years after the inventor’s death and 125 years before Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for isolating it with the duct tape method. Or so he has discovered a recent study from Rice University. The prodigious graphene. Graphene is an allotrope of carbon that has a two-dimensional structure of atoms woven into a hexagonal network. Beyond this curiosity, graphene is an amazing material: it is 200 times stronger than steel but much lighter (airbrush, even lighter than air). It conducts electricity and heat better than any known metal. If we also take into account that it is almost transparent and very flexible, we have a prodigious material for technology. Without going any further, for semiconductors. It could also be used to improve roads or for responsive robotic tissues. And there’s a trick: when its layers are somewhat disordered and not stuck together like a block, they are much easier to separate. This is what Edison achieved unintentionally. Edison’s recipe. He turbostratic graphene can be produced by applying a voltage to a carbon-based material until it reaches a temperature of 2,000 to 3,000 °C, known as Joule heating instant. But what Edison had in his power was to light one of his newly patented light bulbs. Unlike the current ones, theirs had carbon-based filaments, more specifically bamboo. When you flipped the switch, the filament heated up and produced… light and maybe graphene. Account Lucas Eddy, the paper’s lead author, was looking for ways to mass-produce graphene with accessible, affordable materials and tried everything from arc welders to trees that had been struck by lightning. Then he remembered the light bulb. Edison’s patent It was a magnificent scheme to reproduce the experiment. Of course, it was difficult for him to find Edison-style light bulbs with carbon filaments and not tugsten. Then he only had to apply power to 110 volts and turn on the switch for 20 seconds. If you go too far, graphite can form instead of graphene. Why is it important. To begin with, because until now we thought that to obtain this prodigious material we had to resort to 21st century technology, but no: there were conditions to do so in the 19th century. On the other hand, it validates Joule heating as an efficient and scalable way to generate high-quality graphene from cheap carbon sources. And why not, because it opens the doors to reviewing other scientific experiments in history: who knows if other nanomaterials have not been synthesized by chance? under the microscope. Using the lens of an optical microscope, the research team was able to see that the carbon filament had gone from dark gray to a shiny silver. A visual change that predicted the suspicions that I ended up certifying with the Raman spectroscopywhich uses lasers to identify substances through their atoms with high precision: it was turbostratic graphene. While Edison experimented to create a light bulb for everyday use he was able to produce the wonderful material of the future (of today’s future). Obviously there is no way to know for sure what happened in their Menlo Park laboratories because even if the original light bulb were available for analysis, any graphene produced would probably have converted to graphite within a few hours. In Xataka | Electrocute elephants to win a war or how anything went in the fight between Tesla and Edison In Xataka | Don’t call it graphene, call it “goldeno”: this is the new material that is achieved using a peculiar Japanese forging technique Cover | Image of Thomas Edison, ca. 1918–1919. Source: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), United States and HY ART

Madrid needs to build thousands of homes as soon as possible. So you are already testing prefabricated wooden modules

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A while ago (not so long ago) “prefabrication” and “wood” were words that took a back seat in the jargon of large construction companies. The prefabricated houses carried certain negative nuance and the wood sounded like a past material, more typical of other times than the era of concrete, steel and glass. Little by little that is changing and Madrid is the best example: as part of its policy to create affordable accommodation, the City Council has just inaugurated its first promotion built “in wood with prefabricated 3D modules.” And he already warns that he will not stay there. What has happened? That the Madrid City Council just opened a new promotion of affordable rental municipal housing. Fifty two- and three-bedroom apartments with storage rooms and 78 parking spaces. Until then, nothing out of this world. If the news is interesting it is because this work is not the same as others of the Municipal Housing and Land Company (EMVS). in words of the Consistory, it is “the first public housing development in Madrid built in wood with prefabricated 3D modules.” What exactly have they done? The work in question is called ‘Iberia Loreto 1’is located in the district of Barajas and has been carried out with an investment of 14.6 million euros. In total it includes 52 homes (16 with two bedrooms and the remaining 36 with three), as well as 78 parking spaces. Overall, the promotion is distributed in two blocks separated by a green area. The work stands out, however, more for its execution than for what it offers. Those responsible have resorted to “industrialized wood construction”; That is, they have used wooden modules previously created in a factory. Why is it important? Because with this bet, Madrid joins other developers who (inside and outside Spain, both in the public sphere and in the private sector) have been betting in recent years on that same strategy: industrialized construction. Australia has done itfor example, to shortcut your serious crisis of housing, and the model is also viewed with interest in Portugal either USA. In other countries, such as Japan, it is already fully settled. In Spain, data from the sector suggest that industrialized housing still has a reduced weightbut companies note a growing interest. In the Basque Country it is seen as a way to reinforce the offer and recently we told you how in Zaragoza they have raised a new hotel with prefabricated modules. Why’s that? Due to its advantages, something that is responsible for highlighting the Madrid City Council. The City Council recalls that Iberia Loreto 1 has been completed in less than a year and a half. 17 months have passed between the laying of the first stone and the completion of the work. In general, speed is one of the great assets of the industrialized modelwhich consists of manufacturing modules (more or less assembled) in a warehouse that are then moved to the construction site. It may seem like an unimportant change, but it implies that part of the work is done in the factories, not on the site itself, which helps to speed up the works, cut times and even reduce workplace accidents. At the end of the day, workers go from scaffolding to factories. “It does not eliminate occupational risks, but it does allow us to reduce them without giving up technical quality or architectural design,” they claim from The Concrete House. And what will Madrid do now? The Iberia Loreto 1 experience seems to have been good enough for the City Council to consider taking it further and continuing to support it. “After its success, the municipal company is going to take a decisive leap by promoting the construction of 800 homes developed with this system,” advance from the EMVS before insisting that the city “will continue to advance industrialized public construction.” “It allows us to shorten deadlines, reduce the environmental impact and offer more efficient homes.” How much do you want to build? Its objective is to raise more than 760 new industrialized public housing. 170 will be built in the districts of Barajas, Moncloa-Aravaca and Villa de Vallecas. The remaining ones will be deployed in Vilcálvaro (Los Ahijones and Los Berrocales) within the framework of the Suma Vivienda Plan, so they will be developed through a public-private collaboration formula. In total the Consistory assures that in 2026 work will begin on 2,500 new homes for affordable rental through EMVS. To be precise, it talks about 22 new developments in various districts of the capital and remembers the nearly 1,600 apartments in the first phase of the EMVS Suma Vivienda Plan. Images | Madrid City Council and Municipal Housing and Land Company In Xataka | The Government wants to put 1,600 public and affordable homes for rent. Rental Insurance wants to keep them

It already has quantum weapons that it is testing in real missions

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The research, weapons and defense departments of the main powers are a black hole. We cannot know what is on the other side, unless we They are the ones who allow us to take a look. It makes sense, since announcing a technology hastily would alert the rival. In this context, China has just taken a step in the war of the future: quantum war. We are very used to talking about traditional computing, and that of cyberwar It is an easy concept to understand. Hacker attacks on critical enemy systemsforms of make your troops invisible to rival radars or cyberespionage are concepts that have become everyday in current conflicts. And the future lies in quantum weapons. The quantum computing It’s not an incremental improvement in a computer’s processing speed: it’s a breakthrough. It is a paradigm shift and that is why researchers are developing these quantum computers which, in essence, allow solve complex operations in much less time than a classic computer. It is not easy, since although important steps have been taken in recent years, it still has challenges to solve so that your results are optimal. In a war and security context, and in a nutshell, this translates into one thing: if it takes a conventional computer hours or days to breach an enemy’s security, a quantum computer It would take minutes or seconds. And China not only says They are not only developing a dozen quantum warfare tools, but are already testing them in combat. “To design a good weapon, you have to think about what the war of the future will be like” As they point out in South China Morning Postthe People’s Liberation Army confirmed through the official newspaper Science and Technology Daily that they have more than ten experimental quantum cyber warfare tools in development. As we say, some of them are being “tested in frontline missions”, ‘capturing’ intelligence that can be used in the future. This is a project led by the National University of Defense Technology and, according to the report, focuses on three areas: Cloud computing. Artificial intelligence. Quantum technology. The fact that they are already testing some of these systems implies that they have left the theoretical framework, and the Army points out that “speed” is the main advantage that these tools offer. It is not just about making smarter weapons, but about giving more tools to those who analyze the situation. For example, quantum computing allows process large amounts of battlefield data in a matter of seconds. This implies that analysts can help make decisions practically in real time. They can also help in terms of both cybersecurity and cyberespionage, better protecting themselves with artificial intelligence systems that rewrite their code in real time – something we already see with malware such as PromtLock– or busting enemy crypto security faster. Related to this, they can help make GPS navigation systems more resistant to jamming or spoofing attacks. Or even perform navigation and positioning based on quantum sensors without depending on vulnerable infrastructure such as GPS or Starlink. It looks kind of steampunk, but this is part of a quantum computer Really, the applications seem limitless when we consider what has already been achieved with classical computing. These technologies also have potential to improve defenses aerial and detection of stealth aircraft, something in which United States with its F-35 and China with its J-36 They are investing a fortune. As they have commented in the magazine, the development of this technology responds to the need to think “what the war of the future will be like”, and how the war in Ukraine and Russian cyberattacks are showing uscyberwar will be the protagonist. They are, in short, tools that allow a conflict to end before the rival knows that it has started. It is the same philosophy that led to the development of the American F-35 fighter and a form of asymmetric warfare. Ok, very good, but what time advantage are we talking about? An example is the Google Sycamorea quantum computer that performed a calculation that would have taken a classical supercomputer 10,000 years in just… 200 seconds. In 2020, China already complete in another 200 seconds an operation that would have taken a supercomputer more than 2.5 billion years. Are they the only ones? Not even close. For Putin, the race for quantum computing is like the nuclear race after the end of World War II If there are hackers with a good reputation, they are the Russians, and the country is already testing prototypes such as quantum supercomputers Lomonosov Moscow State University with 72 qubits and another 70 qubits of the Lebedev Institute. Europe is also immersed in the era of the ‘Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography’ in matters of defense of critical infrastructure (energy, finance, health or telecommunications) with the objective of having operational systems by 2030. Japan is also in itand the United States has high the budget for research and development of quantum systems from 141,000 million in 2024 to more than 179,000 million dollars (part of a total of almost a billion engaged for general defense). They have an advantage: IBM and Google are leaders in quantum systems maturitybut China is estimated to be closing the gap. And they must be confident in the possibilities of their systems if they already talk about them openly. CCTV images (via X), In Xataka | China has achieved something hard to believe: reducing the production of laser weapons and parts for electric cars to one second

You are already testing ads within your search engine’s AI responses

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Since the beginning of this year in the United States and since October in SpainGoogle has deployed AI Mode, its new search system with artificial intelligence. And, although it is still taking its first steps, it is already experimenting with changes that may not please everyone: it has begun to show advertising within generative responses. Advertising in AI Mode. The novelty has been detected by Brodie ClarkSEO consultant, who has shared a screenshot showing cards with sponsored results labeled “Sponsored”. They appear integrated directly at the end of the conversation, within the generative interface, which represents a relevant change compared to the classic search. In the screenshot shared by Clark, two cards with information and their corresponding organic links can be seen at the top. Then a map appears and, to the right, other informative results, also organic. No advertising here. The interesting thing is precisely at the bottom of the interaction, where the results are no longer organic and two cards appear with the label “Sponsored”. That is, advertising integrated into generative search, embedded within the conversational interface and not just in the margins. It should be noted that the generative text appears to have been omitted from the capture. For now, just tests. Google has confirmed to 9to5Google that these are intermittent experiments and that, at the moment, there are no plans to deploy them generally. This means that some users could start seeing ads in AI Mode, although it is not yet clear if these trials are limited to the United States or also affect markets such as Spain, where the service is already available. And in other AI services? Google is not the only company exploring advertising avenues for artificial intelligence tools. The CFO of OpenAI has recognized that ads could reach free users of ChatGPT. Microsoft, for its part, is already showing advertising on Copilot in certain markets. The strategy makes sense (for Google). Alphabet, Google’s parent company, bases much of its business on digital advertising. This is reflected in a Statista reportwhich remembers that a significant part of its income comes precisely from that model. Integrating ads into AI Mode would therefore be a natural extension of your strategy. AI Mode is powered by artificial intelligence models that generate responses from multiple sources. He does not limit himself to showing them: he interprets them and presents them in the form of a conversation. The system tries to understand what the user wants to know, allows cross-questioning, and maintains context. But it is not infallible. Like any generative model, it can make mistakes, omit data, or even make it up. Images | Google | Brodie Clark In Xataka | Satya Nadella made the world love Microsoft again. AI is making people hate it again

China had been testing a mysterious satellite in orbit for years. A counterespionage company has finally revealed what it was

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On October 16, the starry skies of the Canary Islands were illuminated by a spectacular fireball that crossed the sky from south to north. It was not a meteorite, it was a Chinese satellite that until a few days ago had been a complete mystery. A mystery called XJY-7. Since its launch in December 2020, as part of the maiden flight of the Long March 8 rocket, the Xinjishu Yanzheng-7 had been an unknown. China officially described it as a “new technology verification satellite.” Aside from a blurry render, the world knew almost nothing about its configuration, purpose, or capabilities. And although its re-entry was news in itself, the real news is that, just before it disintegrated, an Australian company managed to photograph it in orbit, finally solving the mystery of what it was and what it was doing up there. Counterespionage in orbit. Using its network of satellites to photograph other objects in orbit, the Australian company HEO achieved what ground-based radars could not: take photos of the XJY-7 up close. The images and the 3D model that HEO built from them revealed features that China had neglected to mention. According to the company has declared to SpaceNewsthe satellite was not a simple test platform; It was equipped with “a large radar antenna” and, most tellingly, a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) antenna. It was a spy satellite. SAR is an advanced remote sensing technology that allows high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface to be obtained in any weather conditions, day or night. The “mysterious” test satellite was, in reality, an advanced surveillance and remote sensing satellite. The HEO observations also revealed a fascinating detail about its design: the satellite had fixed solar panels. This forced it to “rotate its entire body” to maintain power generation, a behavior that the Australian company was able to verify through multiple simultaneous observations from different angles. Satellites that monitor satellites. Traditional monitoring methods (ground-based radars and telescopes) are no longer sufficient to monitor the activity of other nations in orbit. HEO uses a network of more than 40 sensors in flight to take satellite-to-satellite images for your clients. When one of its associated satellites passes near a target, it takes a photo of it. It is a “non-invasive flyby method” that offers real photographs where you can see antennas, panels, thrusters and payloads. With this technique, HEO has managed to identify more than 80 space objects before they appeared in any public catalogue. In an environment where satellite constellations are deployed by the dozens, knowing whether an object is an operational satellite, a piece of space junk, or what type of antenna it carries is crucial for intelligence and defense. Mysterious until his re-entry. Ironically, the mystery that surrounded XJY-7 in its useful life also accompanied it in its death, as the United States Space Command never issued a reentry alert. This is “strange” for an object of this size, says expert Marco Langbroek. It is estimated that XJY-7 had a mass of between 3,000 and 5,000 kg. That an object weighing more than three tons bypassed re-entry warning systems highlights the gaps in conventional space tracking. Even worse when it comes to a satellite with secret capabilities. Image | H.E.O.

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