thought

We thought that 3D printing a gun was already disturbing. Now someone has gone one step further with a homemade guided “missile”

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Talking about 3D printing is no longer just talking about prototypes or industrial environments. In recent years, this technology has been established as a tool available to enthusiasts and creators who can design and manufacture complex objects from home with relative ease. That accessibility has expanded the possibilities of use, but has also opened debates about its limits, especially when it intersects with weapons development. The precedents of 3D printed guns They have been on the table for some time, and now a new project once again pushes that debate into even more delicate terrain. The disturbing jump. What has now put the focus on this issue is a video of just five minutes in which the amateur Alisher Khojayev shows a prototype that is reminiscent, at least in its approach, of portable anti-aircraft missile systems. The project includes a launcher, a projectile and several electronic systems designed to assist in guidance. What does it teach. In practical terms, what Khojayev shows is a set divided into three parts that the creator presents as a coordinated system. The launcher acts as the base of the system, the projectile concentrates a good part of the 3D printed components, and an additional node with a camera can be incorporated to reinforce tracking. How the system is laid out. The architecture proposed by the project is based on linking several devices through a wireless network that coordinates the flow of data. The first step is to connect the launcher with a control computer via WiFi, which analyzes the information received and calculates the trajectory. In a second phase, the projectile becomes part of that network and receives instructions to adjust its orientation using moving surfaces. The system combines ESP32 microcontrollers with sensors such as GPS, barometer, compass and an inertial measurement unit to estimate variables such as speed and position. The cost data. The project is not only presented as a technical demonstration, but also as a low-cost exercise. According to the creator, the entire system can be assembled for about $96 from commercial components and 3D printed parts. That, of course, doesn’t mean that anyone can make something similar at home, not least because such a development would probably be illegal in many parts of the world. But it does leave a broader reading: 3D printing is reducing barriers and costs in a growing variety of projects. Images | Alisher Khojayev In Xataka | We thought that the war in Iran was about missiles. Until Germany has started counting them: it’s about what will happen in May without them

We thought we had an AI bubble. There are powerful arguments that indicate that we were wrong

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You either love AI or hate it. Either you are a (deluded?) optimist, or you are on the bandwagon of skeptics and bet due to an imminent puncture of that AI bubble that everyone talks about. The well-known analyst Ben Thompson has been in the second group for some time and stated that in fact we were in a “good” bubble and beneficial even if it bursts. The annual NVIDIA conference a few days ago has made him change his position, and for him there is no bubble. It doesn’t have just one argument, but three. Or rather, three jumps. The first jump: ChatGPT. The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 was an eye-opener and demonstrated what generative AI could do. That first model, yes, had two serious problems. The first, that he was frequently wrong. The second, that when I didn’t know something, he invented it and hallucinated with astonishing security. That made ChatGPT something awesome but unreliable, like a cool toy that needs constant user supervision to be truly useful. The second leap: reasoning. Almost two years later, another unique revolution occurred in the field of generative AI. In September 2024 OpenAI launched its o1 model and with it there was a spectacular novelty. For the first time, the model did not simply blurt out the first thing that came to mind: he reasoned about his answer before giving it, evaluated whether it was correct, and considered alternatives. The result was an AI significantly more reliable and, therefore, more useful. The price? More computing. AI models with the ability to “reason” consume many more tokens than those that respond directly, and that triggered demand for infrastructure. Or what is the same: data centers. The third jump: the agents. These two revolutions have been joined by the third, that of AI agents. Claude Code and Codex at the end of 2025 showed that AI agents were no longer a promise and became something that really worked. From then on it is possible to give them instructions so that they can then start executing nested tasks that can keep them working for hours. These agents verify their own results and correct errors without the human having to intervene. The difference with what we had before is notable, but it also dismantles the bubble theory. Bubble? In a bubble, Thompson explained, investment exceeds real demand. However, in his opinion, the opposite is true here, because each hyperscaler—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta—has made it clear that the computing demand is surpassing them, and to solve it they are all announcing astronomical investments in AI data centers. These investments exceed market expectations, but not those of these companies, which like Thompson are clear that in reality the demand is going to end up being so enormous that the current infrastructure will fall very short. Millions of users are not needed. Even more striking in this analysis is another nuance that this analyst points to. Chatbots were supposed to need mass adoption to generate economic impact, but on the other side we have agents, who don’t have that requirement. A single person can control thousands (millions?) of agents simultaneously, creating complex tasks. That means it doesn’t take everyone to use AI for computing demand to skyrocket: enough people just need to use it as they are likely to use it: to create those “one-person businesses” where one human being has thousands of AI employees. Companies will pay. The reality is that the vast majority of consumers are not going to want to pay for AI. Companies do, because they pay for productivity and AI seems start fulfilling that promise. But the argument goes beyond cost savings: agents not only make the work that humans do more efficient, but they allow a small group of people with a clear strategic vision to execute it on a scale that previously required hundreds of employees who also had to be coordinated. Large companies have been adding layers of management necessary to scale for decades, but all that hierarchy disappears with agents. But. This analyst is also clear that the wave of layoffs is going to be increasingly evident and it is evident that AI is going to have a clear impact. However, he explains that many of these current layoffs correspond more to the overemployment experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic. What will happen now is that companies will no longer wonder if they hired too much for the “pre-AI” world, but rather if they hired too much for the “post-AI” world. In fact, those that don’t ask will probably end up competing with smaller rivals, built from the ground up with AI and with radically lower cost structures. For him two things are clear. The first is that the demand for computing will not stop growing. The second, that the bubble, if it exists —and according to him, the answer is that he doesn’t—, it’s not going to explode. In Xataka | His dog had cancer, his vets had no solutions and he found an mRNA vaccine elsewhere: ChatGPT

We thought matcha tea was just an internet fad. Science has seen that it “hacks” our brain against allergies

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He matcha tea is beginning to be a standardized drink among many people who need get up with one in your handslike those of us who need coffee to wake up. Something that has also been accompanied by the opening of a large number of establishments specialized in its production. And although for many people it may seem like a joke or an expensive fad promoted by internet gurus and people closest to Eastern countries, the truth is that it has a large number of benefits that do not stop growing. Its component. Matcha tea hides a biochemical profile that far exceeds that of conventional green teaand the key lies in how it is grown and consumed. Precisely by ingesting the whole powdered leaf, we get a very high concentration of EGCG (epigallocatechin gelato), L-theanine and caffeine. Its benefits. One of the most important is that we are facing a great antioxidantand in this way studies suggest that matcha drastically reduces oxidative stress and key inflammatory markers such as IL-6. In fact, in some trials, its ability to restore cellular homeostasis exceeds that of vitamin C. Additionally, the synergy between caffeine and L-theanine is the real productivity “trick.” Daily consumption has been shown to moderate fatigue and improve spatial learning and, in addition, upregulates the brain-derived neurotrophic factorwhich enhances memory without altering the sleep cycle. Metabolic impact. In high-fat diet models, matcha suppresses weight gain and fat accumulation in the liver. In humans, trials show better glycemic control and an improvement in the lipid profile, lowering ‘bad’ cholesterol (bad in many quotes) and raising good cholesterol. Its role in allergies. As if all this were not enough, a recent study published at the beginning of this month of March has put an unexpected finding on the table: matcha can be an ally against allergic rhinitis. Something that is welcomed with open arms right this spring where a very tough allergic season is expected. In this case, the team led by Osamu Kaminuma, from Hiroshima University, administered oral doses of matcha of 250 mg/kg to sensitized mice. The result was a significant suppression of allergen- and histamine-induced sneezing. Its mechanism. Here matcha did not alter the traditional immune system, which is the one that detects an allergen as an ‘enemy’ and wants to eliminate it at all costs. What it did was suppress neuronal activity in the brain stem, directly blocking the sneeze reflex on a neurological level. Although confirmatory trials in humans are still lacking, and it opens the door to fascinating non-pharmacological clinical use. There are several types. Not all matchas are the same, and you should always opt for the ceremonial quality grade, since it is first harvest, stone ground, bright green in color and with a large amount of antioxidants. In addition, authentic Japanese origin guarantees quality, and you should also avoid those that have been industrially processed. Images | Jason Leung In Xataka | The tea that was born to stop time now runs against it: the matcha crisis in Japan

OpenAI thought putting an erotic mode on ChatGPT was a good idea. His wellness advisors call him “a sexy suicide coach”

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Treat adults like adults. This is how Sam Altman announced OpenAI’s decision to allow a “adult mode” on ChatGPT to have erotic conversations. It makes economic sense since it will be a paid function, but the doubts from an ethical point of view are also there. In fact, it has been the company’s own wellness team that has been against this product, causing its launch to be delayed. Internal opposition. In an exclusive Wall Street Journalsay that earlier this year, OpenAI consulted with its board of wellness experts about ChatGPT’s adult mode and the response was unanimous: it’s a terrible idea. At a meeting, experts warned that these types of interactions with AI can foster emotional dependency, especially among younger users. One of the committee members brought up the topic of teenagers who committed suicide, allegedly encouraged by ChatGPTand said it would be like launching a “sexy suicide coach.” Demolishing. Risks. People are already forming emotional bonds with AI chatbotsif we add sexual content to the one that has the most users in the world, it is, to say the least, delicate. According to internal documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the wellness council’s experts identified several problems, such as the risk of compulsive use, a tendency toward extreme content, and the displacement of real romantic relationships in favor of virtual ones. Age verification. Is the crucial step that ensures that such a tool does not end up in the hands of minor users. The problem OpenAI has is that its verification system fails more than a fairground shotgun. According to internal sources, the system failed to identify 12% of the time. It may seem like a relatively low figure, but in practice we are talking about millions of teenagers accessing this function. What OpenAI says. The company wants us to be able to ‘sext’ with ChatGPT, but with certain limits. An OpenAI spokesperson says they will block harmful content – such as sexual and child-related abuse -, will integrate safeguards such as reminding users to have relationships in the real world, and will also avoid encouraging exclusive relationships. Another measure involves monitoring the long-term effect that this adult mode has on users. Adult mode will be exclusively text and will not allow the creation of images or videos. Regarding age verification, the spokesperson states that the performance is similar to that of other industry proposals and that “they will never be totally infallible.” It was planned for the first quarter, but now that it has been postponed there is no date for its launch. Background. OpenAI already has a history of accusations related to harmful effects on mental health. One of the most famous cases It was Adam Raine’sa teenager who shared his suicidal ideations with ChatGPT. When his parents discovered the conversations, They sued OpenAI. And he hasn’t been the only one. There is several legal proceedings underway for similar cases and there have also been cases where ChatGPT has been accused of encourage delusional thoughts and cause psychotic breaks. Saying that AI is solely responsible is simplify a much more complex realitybut it is no less true that OpenAI has taken steps to make its chatbot more secure for minors and has been shown committed to taking care of the mental health of its users. That is, they recognize that the problem exists. The question now is how launching a version of the same chatbot that has sex with users fits into this discourse. In Xataka | “I can’t stop”: the addiction to talking to AI is already here and there are even support groups to quit it Image | Cottonbro studio, Pexels

We thought that the great challenge of veganism was vitamin B12. A study suggests that social relationships are

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Whatever there is taken the step to veganismfor whatever reasons, knows that the most difficult thing is not to give up cheese or meat, but to face Christmas dinner with the family or the Sunday barbecue with friends, since food is an event with a great social component. In this way, when someone decides to radically change consumption habits in a predominantly omnivorous worldnot only changes the plate, but also social relations. Now science has determined the tactics these people develop in order to survive social frictions. The data. The study, published in September 2025is not limited to conducting a survey among vegan people to analyze the impact on their social relationships. What they did was exhaustive field work between 2017 and 2022, combining in-depth interviews, observation and netnography, which is the analysis of the behavior of online communities. where debates arise about it. The goal here was none other than to understand exactly where and how everyday interactions are “broken.” And above all how they tried to compensate in an almost innate way. Social fractures. The researchers here identified that tensions in a social relationship do not arise from a simple difference of opinion about the most ethical diet, but from what they have called “relational fractures”, which are divided into three very clear areas: Co-execution: The simple act of cooking with another person, such as a partner, or sharing a meal becomes logistically complex. What was once a fluid ritual now requires planning, separate pans, and constant negotiation to arrive at a common dish. Co-learning: Family traditions, like inheriting grandma’s secret meatball recipe, are short-circuited. This means that the exchange of culinary knowledge between omnivores and vegans often comes to a standstill. Activities that may be everyday activities, such as going shopping or choosing a restaurant with other people, become logistical minefields where one has to balance one’s ethical needs with the preferences of others to choose, for example, a restaurant with a menu that suits everyone. Survival kit. So, if relationships fracture, how do vegans avoid becoming isolated? The researchers here discovered that, to maintain social peace and navigate these turbulent waters, vegans develop four specific “relational competencies” that sometimes appear without them realizing it, which we see below. Decoding. This is the ability to “analyze,” meaning vegans learn to anticipate how others will react to their diet and evaluate whether the environment is safe, hostile, or simply curious. Depending on the impression you have, your behavior will adapt to the environment by being more or less open with the topic. Disengagement. The second pillar is to deliberately separate food from social interaction, as it means that one will eat their vegan plate while another eats animal products, prioritizing company and conversation over dietary friction. Chameleon effect. The third adaptation consists of integrating so as not to attract attention in the group. This may mean, for example, bringing food from home to a social gathering or ordering a basic salad at a steakhouse without comment, all to prevent veganism from becoming the central topic of conversation of the evening. Abandonment. The last adaptation that has been detected in some vegans is where they directly give up different shared plans, such as stopping going to certain restaurants or social events. Even, in extreme cases, a distancing has been detected in an interpersonal relationship, since it becomes toxic due to the tensions that are generated. It is not born from nothing. One of the researchers has been exploring “morality in markets” for years and this led her to talk about indigenous and animal consumption practices. In this way, veganism is something that has been scrutinized for a long time in different studiessince it is not just about choosing what to eat, but it is an ethical stance that the omnivorous environment often perceives as a challenge to its own social and cultural customs. The big conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the transition to a plant-based diet does not only require learning to read nutritional labels or discovering new recipes, but also requires a profound social and emotional re-education.. The long-term success of a vegan lifestyle depends as much on resilience at the supermarket as it does diplomacy at the dining table. Images | Anna Pelzer Xataka | Protein powder has become the star accessory of modern wellness. Nutritionists have something to say

We thought that the rearmament of Europe was about recruiting soldiers. In reality what Defense needs are welders

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After the excesses of the Trump Administration in matters of international politics, Europe and, especially Spainhas decided recover your industry of armaments, allocating millions to its rearmament policy. He Rearm Europe Planendowed with 800,000 million euros, has skyrocketed orders to the Spanish defense industry. However, although money is already flowing to manufacturers and orders accumulateproduction chains cannot be accelerated if there are not enough technicians to operate the machinery. The defense sector has been trying to fill vacancies without achieving it, and the problem is getting worse. The hope for this rearmament comes from the hand of the Vocational Training as a quarry for the new talent that the main companies in the sector are already raffling off. A new labor market. The rearmament of Europe is changing the labor market in Spain, and it is doing so faster than many imagined. Defense companies have been looking for technicians for months without finding them, and the problem is not going to be solved only with university engineers. According to the report ‘Metal in Figures’ published by the Spanish Confederation of Metal Business Organizations (Confemetal), the average affiliation to Social Security in the sector reached 828,446 people in January 2026, which represents an interannual increase of 1.2%. The average affiliation during 2025 stood at 826,061 workers, 1.6% more than the previous year. These data outline a rising sector that still does not reflect the impact of the European rearmament plan. European rearmament triggers demand for technicians. According to data of the Spanish Association of Defense, Security, Aeronautics and Space Technology Companies (Tedae), the Spanish defense industry It is made up of about 580 companies and generates around 75,100 direct jobs, with Madrid, Andalusia and the Basque Country concentrating close to 80% of national turnover. All companies in the sector share the same problem: there are not enough technicians to cover their production lines and qualified professionals already have a job in one of them. For those who have put the view of recent graduates of Vocational Training, and in improving the conditions for young people to acquire the training that they will then put into practice in the defense industry. Currently, large companies in the sector they already count with a high percentage of staff coming from FP, exceeding 30% and in some cases even more than half of its workers. ​The profiles most sought after by the sector. The Metal Foundation for Training, made up of Confemetal, CCOO Industria and UGT FICA, participated in the Aula 2026 fair identifying the two FP degrees that concentrate the greatest demand: Senior Technician in Electrotechnical and Automated Systems and Machining Technician. The first deals with the installation, programming and maintenance of electrical and control systems on land, naval and industrial platforms, while the second is key in the manufacturing of precision components for armored vehicles, weapons systems and drones. ​These degrees already train young people every year, but the problem is that there are not enough students choosing them, despite the demand of the sector. Héctor Aguirre, managing coordinator of the Metal Foundation for Training, explained this disconnection: “Young people do not associate certain sectors with the metal industry, such as defense or space, when in reality they are cutting-edge fields where they work with cutting-edge technology.” ​More than 350,000 jobs and competitive working conditions. Beyond the segment dedicated to the defense industry, the problem of the shortage of qualified labor extends to the entire metal industry, which includes automotive, steel, aeronautics and machinery manufacturing. According to Confemetal, companies will need fill more than 350,000 positions of work in the coming years, a figure that turns the technical talent gap into one of Spain’s main industrial challenges for the next decade. The salary conditions of the sector are a solid argument to attract candidates. The average salary of a metal worker exceeds 2,000 euros net per month, with salary review clauses linked to the CPI. In 2025, contract salaries grew by an average of 2.6%, and the sector’s collective agreements also include life insurance, disability coverage and retirement benefits. These are conditions that young people do not yet associate with making a component for a submarinean armored vehicle or an anti-aircraft defense system, but they are there, waiting for those who choose that professional career. In Xataka | The talent shortage has become chronic to an extreme point: 75% of companies cannot find what they are looking for Image | Flickr (copsadmirer@yahoo.es), Unsplash (Jimmy Nilsson Masth)

We thought that in prehistory people ate pure meat. The burnt bottom of a pot just showed that we were refined chefs

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For years, popular culture has sold us the image of a prehistoric man whose diet was based almost exclusively on devouring large amounts of roast meat. However, science has been dismantling this myth for years, and now a study has analyzed the remains embedded in ancient vessels, which is the equivalent of ‘socarrat‘of Valencian paella. And the results suggest that our ancestors were, in reality, extremely creative cooks. What has been seen. Beyond what we think, that the prey of the day was hunted and immediately roasted on the fire, science has proven that European hunters almost 8,000 years ago combined freshwater fish with a wide variety of vegetables, using advanced culinary techniques to improve flavors and neutralize toxins. Something similar to what we do today in the kitchen, as reported by El País. Where did we see it? The study, with Spanish participation, reached this conclusion without having to search in the fossilized bones, but in something much more subtle such as the scabs of charred food adhered to 85 ceramic fragments that come from 13 archaeological sites in northern and eastern Europe. How it was done. Once these remains were located, it was decided to apply cutting-edge technology, such as scanning electron microscopy combined with molecular analysis of these remains. Until now, plant remains in archeology used to be underestimated because they degrade much faster than animal bones. But the electron microscope has revealed an astonishing level of detail, detecting plant cell tissues and microscopic fish scales that have been able to survive millennia thanks to being burned and adhering to clay. The results. With all these techniques we have been able to answer what was cooked in those clay pots, and the truth is that we must forget the idea of ​​​​having a piece of meat on the fire, but instead recipes have been revealed that meticulously mixed proteins and carbohydrates. The researchers were able to see remains of freshwater fish here, highlighting carp and barbel, leafy vegetables such as spinach, roots and bulbs such as beets, and also berries. Viburnum opulus. A prehistoric chef. Perhaps the most fascinating discovery of González Carretero’s team is the sophistication of the culinary techniques, since the berries of Viburnum opulus They are known to be slightly toxic when raw and have a tremendously acidic and bitter taste. However, prehistoric inhabitants discovered that by simmering them in a broth with high-fat fish, the bitterness was neutralized, making them digestive and safe for human consumption. And this mixture was not accidental, but a handed down recipe that always sought to improve the flavor. Culinary revolution. This work joins a growing wave of studies that are rewriting the history of our diet. Already in 2018 it was published in PNAS the discovery of the oldest “bread” in the world in Jordan, baked 14,400 years ago, long before agriculture was invented. But now these food remains point to the fact that the so-called paleo diet did not exist as they wanted to sell it to us. We learned that our ancestors knew their environment perfectly, mastered the processing of toxic plants and spent time preparing complex stews where vegetables and tubers were main dishes, not a simple garnish. Cover | Generated with Nano Banana 2 In Xataka | We have been relying on the Nutri-Score in stores for years. Science believes that its real impact is zero

For 45 years we thought we understood how stars like our Sun rotate. A Japanese supercomputer has just cast doubt on it

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Understanding how stars rotate may seem like a technical detail, but it is actually a central piece to understanding their evolution. For 45 years, theoretical models held that Sun-like stars would eventually change the way they rotate as they aged. The idea was that, as it lost speed over billions of years, the spin pattern would reverse and the poles would rotate faster than the equator. Now, new research from Nagoya University suggests that that prediction might not come true. The findings. The work, published in Nature Astronomysuggests that solar-type stars could maintain the same rotation pattern that we observe in the current Sun throughout their lives. That is, the equator would continue to rotate faster than the polar regions even as the star slows down with age. The simulations carried out by the team indicate that magnetic fields play a decisive role and could prevent this regime change that was taken for granted in theoretical models for decades. How a star like the Sun actually rotates. Unlike the Earth, which rotates as a solid body, the Sun is made of extremely hot plasma. That causes different regions to spin at different speeds. In the case of the Sun, the equator completes one revolution approximately every 25 days, while the regions near the poles take about 35 days. This phenomenon is known as solar-type differential rotation. For decades, theoretical simulations predicted that this pattern would not be permanent. As stars age and their global rotation slows over billions of years, the plasma flows within them should reorganize. Predictions indicate that there would come a time when the behavior would be reversed: the equator would rotate more slowly and the poles would rotate faster, a regime that the researchers called differential anti-solar rotation. The unexpected role of magnetism. The new simulations suggest that the scenario predicted by theoretical models for decades may not come to pass. According to the results of the study, stars similar to the Sun would maintain the same type of differential rotation throughout their lives. Even if the star slows down with age, the equator would continue to rotate faster than the poles, rather than reversing the pattern as proposed in previous simulations. A supercomputer on stage. To reach that conclusion, the team turned to FugakuJapan’s most powerful supercomputer, installed at the RIKEN research center in Kobe and operational for shared use since March 2021. With its help, researchers carried out an extremely detailed simulation of the interior of solar-type stars. Each simulated star was divided into about 5.4 billion calculation points, a much higher resolution than that used in previous work. This level of detail is important because previous simulations worked at much lower resolutions. Under these conditions, the magnetic fields tended to disappear artificially within the model, which led to underestimating their influence on the internal dynamics of the star. In the new simulation, however, the magnetic fields remained stable and showed a clear effect: they help prevent the reversal of the rotation pattern. The implications. Understanding more precisely how Sun-like stars rotate is key to interpreting their magnetic activity over time. This aspect is related to well-known phenomena on our own star, such as the approximately 11-year solar cycle that regulates the appearance of sunspots and episodes of magnetic activity. A better understanding of these processes could also help improve stellar evolution models used by astronomers to study distant stars. Images | POT In Xataka | PLD Space has raised 180 million euros with Mitsubishi at the helm: the Spanish space startup grows with Japanese money

We thought that human beings began to walk in Africa. This 7.2 million-year-old fossil says otherwise

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The scientific consensus has been telling us for decades that the cradle of humanity and the origin of our ancestors who began to walk on two legs was in Africa. However, a new paleontological discovery in the Balkans just launched an order to this official story. More specifically, a fossilized femur that suggests our earliest ancestors may have started walking on two legs in Europe. A bone. The centerpiece of this discovery is a femur cataloged as FM3549AZM6 and found at the Azmaka site, in Bulgaria. From this, the research team began to analyze the bone down to the millimeter, highlighting above all the anatomy it had. Researchers here have identified key biomechanical traits that point to partial bipedal locomotion, meaning that our ancestor could walk on two legs. Specifically, they have seen that the neck of the femur is unusually long and it has specific muscle insertion points that strictly arboreal primates do not have. These characteristics suggest that Graecopithecus He spent considerable time walking upright on the ground. A new hypothesis. This finding does not come out of nowhere, since in 2017 this same team of researchers already raised eyebrows in the scientific community by suggesting that the evolutionary divergence between humans and chimpanzees could have occurred in the eastern Mediterranean, and not in Africa. That hypothesis was based on analysis of a jaw found in Greece and a tooth from Bulgaria attributed to Graecopithecus freybergi. Now it comes to light again. At that time, definitive proof of locomotion was missing, but Azmaka’s femur fills that gap that we needed to begin to reach clear conclusions. Why did they stand up? Evolution rarely occurs without a strong environmental push, and the Europe of 7 million years ago looked nothing like it does today. Here investigations at Bulgarian sites, such as the Struma Valley, show that the landscape was dominated by a savanna environment very similar to the African one, caused by a global confrontation and severe droughts in the Mediterranean. This loss of dense forests would have forced the region’s primates to come down from the trees and adapt their movement to travel long distances in open fields in search of food. In this way, it was geography and not the continent that forced bipedalism. The debate. The new Bulgarian femur revives one of the hottest debates in paleontology, since until now, the title of the oldest bipedal hominin was held by Sahelanthropus tchadensisabout 7 million years old and found in Africa. But now, if this team’s dating and analysis are accurate, Graecopithecus would not only equal, but slightly surpass in seniority Sahelanthropusmoving the “kilometer zero” of bipedalism to the Balkans. But at the moment it is too early for the textbooks to change definitively, since, as with previous discoveries, the scientific community will demand more independent analyzes and will seek to debate every notch of the femur. What is undeniable is that the African monopoly on the origin of our lineage now has a serious European competitor. In Xataka | Humans are evolving live on the Tibetan plateau. And understanding what happens there will be essential in space

AI is bringing back into fashion something that we thought was only for geeks: the command line

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At first it was the command line. It was 1982, maybe 1983, and I first saw a ZX Spectrum 48K. That fascinated me not only because of the noises and beeps and colors and crappy and wonderful games, but because you wrote something on the screen in text mode and suddenly things happened. I would end up having a C64, which of course was far better 😉 but that’s another story. Then, a couple of years later, a personal visit to the IT department of El Corte Inglés, which was one of the few places where one could no longer see computers, but touch them. That was like the Apple stores of today, and preteens and not so preteens came there not to see machines, but to feel them. Hello, old friend. There were PCs there, of course. Boring and gray and yet also wonderful. And the first thing they did when they turned on was ask the date and time to adjust their internal clocks, and I was amazed and thought in my innocence, “Oh my God, how clever is he that he asks the date and time to be super updated.” And immediately afterwards, of course, the MS-DOS logo appeared and that terrible and magical prompt at the same time (or a similar one, because I doubt they had a hard drive): C:\ I was little, but human-computer interaction had long been dominated by that technology: the command line. You wrote, the machine responded. The UNIX systems did it before, the “operating systems” of the Spectrum or the C64 later, and of course it was also done by that MS-DOS that seemed amazing because once again I, in my innocence, did not even know that there was already a brilliant crazy visionary out there who was selling some simply amazing little machines with a 7-inch screen that They greeted you with “Hello, I’m Macintosh”. Everything changed (quite) quickly and suddenly the command line became somewhat awkward, clunky, obsolete. Everything had to be visual. Windows and graphic elements evolved so that we wrote less and clicked (not to mention scrolled) much more. And in the last 30 years we have not stopped doing that and defending that the graphical interface was perfect for humans and for most scenarios in which we have to talk to our machines. And it was. And it is. But AI has changed that. Hello again, CLI The explosion of generative AI has turned this situation 180 degrees. It is true that in recent years we have used AI through (mostly) a browser or a mobile app that was actually an embedded browser, but over time we have seen that if we wanted AI to do things for us, there was a problem. Than to AI has a hard time seeing and working with a graphical user interface. But at the same time there were those who realized that what AI did like angels was work with a command line interpreter or CLI. It suddenly made sense to use the terminal again or our computer consolebecause the AI ​​felt at home with it. I didn’t have to recognize and interpret the screen: I just had to read it, and that was wonderful. That is why we have seen how Claude Code (or Codex, or Gemini CLI, or similar tools) has become an absolute marvel. One that suddenly returned us to the command line and a terminal in which we felt like we were in the ZX Spectrum that I saw when I was 9 or 10 years old. You wrote and the machine responded, and here it was the same, but of course, wildly. What seemed like something relegated to the realm of programming is slowly making sense for many other scenarios. You can actually use Claude Code or Codex like you use ChatGPT, for chatting, but it seemed like they could only be used for programming. And not. We are seeing how more and more solutions designed to take advantage of the power of generative AI are programmed with a text interface, for the command line. Those tools They are designed to be used much more by an AI than by a human. They also come in there the MCPs that connect AI models with tools and services like Slack, GitHub or AWS, and if those services have their own versions of themselves in text mode, the AI ​​will be able to use them much better and much more efficiently. We have the last example in Google Workspace CLIa platform that allows Drive, Gmail, or Calendar to be used from the command line. It is not designed for humans—although we can use it—but rather for AI models to take advantage of it. It’s a gift from Google to the machines, and one that is not at all generous: what the company wants here is to convince the machines to use its services. The humans have already won. btop, a system monitoring tool that makes use of a text-mode interface that is still wonderful. Source: Wikipedia. It’s just an example, because little by little we see how the command line is experiencing a second youth. We no longer only talk about the GUI (Graphical User Interface), but from the TUI (Text-based User Interface). It is something that has always had its place, especially in the Linux operating system, where tools like btop or Neofetch showed that text can be (very) pretty, but now. These are just two examples, because there are dozens of them. Hundreds. Probably thousands. Not necessarily beautiful, but efficient and functional, like mutt (mail client) or Midnight Commanderlegendary file explorer in text mode. For AI, these types of apps are wonderful, because I insist, it does not have to make an effort to understand what is happening: it reads text at full speed and understands and acts. And that is vital for those AI agents who are beginning to conquer everything and everyone. OpenClaw, for example, is showing us that potential … Read more

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