years

China had not updated its EREV standards for nine years. Now that they sell a million a year, they are going to catch up

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The EREV (extended range electric vehicles, for its acronym in English), are beginning to have a lot of prominence in China. So much so, that in the country they have changed the regulations, publishing a complete review of their technical standard. This new revision, QC/T1086-2026, replaces a 2017 regulatory framework and will come into force on November 1. And it is that with more than 1 million units sold Every year in the country, the Chinese market begins to assimilate this type of vehicle that, outside of this region, is still relatively unknown to us. Why does it matter? The previous standard, in force since 2017, described the requirements in a mostly qualitative way, since the manufacturer defined its own specifications and the regulatory framework barely provided specific figures. Nine years later, the market has changed a lot. And according to industry data collected by CarNewsChinasales of EREVs in China exceeded one million units in 2024 and reached 1.2 million in 2025. So with those figures, it is logical to think that the regulations had to be revised. What the change consists of. Until now, the rules were somewhat vague, so this regulation aims to take a closer look at some EREV specifications and standardize them. An example is how much energy the gasoline engine delivers in each millisecond. And to give us an idea, now in the smallest generators (up to 67 HP), the maximum margin of error that will be allowed when delivering energy will be just 1.5 kW. For the most powerful engines, the deviation may not exceed 3%. That is, the motor must deliver energy to the battery more precisely and efficiently. According to CarNewsChinathe thresholds have been set based on real production data from manufacturers and suppliers, with the aim that all major manufacturers on the market can meet them without difficulty, but that lower-performance designs are left out of the standard. EMC and noise. One of the most relevant new features of the standard is the introduction of specific electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and noise and vibration (NVH) tests. The first extended range cars were basically standby generators that started when the battery was depleted. Today’s systems now have integrated energy management components that work in constant coordination with the battery, electric motors and vehicle control systems. This greater integration requires more demanding standards in electromagnetic interference and acoustic comfort. In fact, more recent models like the Aito M9which HIMA launched last May with up to 890 HP, or the IM Motors LS8 EREV, with 430 km of electric range, already reflect these changes, and are examples that have served to develop this new regulation. Durability for long term use. The standard also introduces two durability tests: a test of 750 hours with alternating load and another of 100,000 start-stop cycles. Both were developed with real-world usage data and damage equivalence models, and are designed to simulate approximately 300,000 kilometers of real-world driving, including urban conditions with frequent starts. Who is driving the market. The ecosystem of manufacturers that has driven this revision in the regulations includes both established brands and newer manufacturers. Li Auto, Seres, Deepal and Leapmotor have expanded their EREV offerings, while premium models such as the Aito M9 have helped position the technology in high-priced segments. Zeekr, Geely’s electric brandhas gone even further with the Zeekr 9X and 8X, since the former exceeded 50,000 accumulated deliveries in a few months after its launch and is scheduled to be exported to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe during 2026. Cover image | HIMA In Xataka | This Aston Martin DB9 was sold for $57,000, but the craziest thing is not its price: it is the two flamethrowers it hides

One fine day Richard Feynman left a restaurant. 50 years later we already know why better known bad than good unknown

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In the late 1970s, the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman He went with his friend Ralph Leighton to eat at a Thai place named Indra in Glendale, California. Looking at the restaurant’s menu, Leighton couldn’t decide: should he order his usual favorite, ginger chicken, or try something new and perhaps better? Any other person would have responded in one way or another (“if you like it so much, you better insure” or something like “he who does not risk does not gain”). Richard Feynman, brilliant as he is, did something else: He started scribbling equations on a napkin. and he turned that into a mathematical problem that he not only detected, but solved. For some reason, the prodigious physicist never published that analysis, and his notes were left to Leighton. For years that story was forgotten, but 50 years later researchers from the universities of Oxford, New York and Princeton managed to rescue those notes and Feynman’s solution. And what that revealed was surprising. Rescuing Feynman’s restaurant problem The researchers explained in their study, published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) that although Feynman had focused on what happened to the different dishes in the same restaurant, they They preferred to expand the problem: what happens when we are in city X, for example, on vacation, and we want to choose a restaurant. Richard Feynman’s handwritten notes on a restaurant napkin turned out to be a fascinating problem. Source: PNAS. Feynman’s restaurant problem is actually a variant of what is known as the optimal stopping problemto which also belongs the famous variant of secretary problemwhich gave rise to the 37% rule: When choosing from 100 options, one should try the first 37 to maximize the chances of choosing the best one. Then you can “settle” for that one, because it is difficult for there to be a better one among the rest. But we are digressing. Feynman’s original mathematical formula established an optimal policy based on a uniform distribution of quality. According to the physicist’s formulation, our quality bar is not static nor falls by chance, but decreases exponentially as the days available in our vacation calendar are exhausted. Thus, it usually happens that when we are at the beginning of our vacation, We usually demand absolute perfection in the chosen restaurant because the remaining time allows the risk to be amortized. In the end, however, that threshold of demand collapses and we settle for a decent restaurant. We move from the exploration phase – taking risks with new places (or dishes) – to exploitation – repeating places (or dishes) that we liked. The researchers wanted to test this mathematical model with a sample of 2,520 participants, and in doing so they detected a striking anomaly. During the first nights in a new city, participants explored massively, much more than mathematical logic itself advised. The researchers discovered that this phenomenon responded to the so-called “early exploration bonus” that fell rapidly as the days went by: if we have an opportunity to “get it right,” our brain shows tremendous psychological resistance to tying itself to a restaurant at the first opportunity. We prefer to continue trying other restaurants because we trust that we will find a better one. The four “gastronomic worlds” of the study: the behavior of the participants varied according to each distribution. Source: PNAS. But as the experiment went on, something else was discovered. Humans are not blind robots, but we calibrate the bar according to the city we visit. The experiment placed participants in four different “food worlds” in which the ratio of excellent restaurants to mediocre (or decent) ones varied. The data showed that the human brain is capable of diagnosing the type of “food world” it finds itself in just by trying three or four restaurants. From there, set the bar. Feynman mathematically intuited that the bar would lower exponentially as the return date approached, but the experiment revealed something different. Human beings reduce our level of demand linearly with respect to the proportion of days we have left on vacation. We are becoming less and less demanding and more “nostalgic”. This guarantees something important: that at least on the last nights we enjoy the “better bad known than good not known”, because that “bad known” will not be so bad after all: we have already experienced it. Fascinating. Image | SAP (edited with Magnific) In Xataka | Studying by heart seems like a good idea until you forget it. The Feynman method appeals to your understanding, not your memory.

The long waits between seasons of series have doubled in five years. Some platforms have turned it into a strategy

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Some cases of recent successful series in which a more than proven trend is detected: ‘Stranger Things’ took more than three years to launch its fifth season. ‘Separation’, almost the same time for his second. ‘Wednesday’ was not the fastest series either. The pattern is so clear that they have even given it a name. And for once we can’t put all the blame on the pandemic or the writers’ strikes (although they played a role in getting us to this point). The figures. Ten years ago, the average wait between seasons of original series on the main streaming platforms was 10 months. In 2025, this figure reached 21 months, according to a Ampere Analysis report published in May 2026. This analysis covers 1,611 original series on very diverse platforms, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock. The firm has dubbed the phenomenon “the Stranger Things effect.” It was seen coming. But although the pandemic is not the final cause of this phenomenon, its impact is indisputable in the paradigm shift. The gap between seasons was already growing slowly until the 2020 pandemic he shot her 12 to 16 months in a single year. After that, the data relatively stabilized until the strikes of writers and actors 2023 caused the second big jump: from 17 to 21 months between 2023 and 2024. In 2025 the trend stabilized, for now definitively. But you have to understand the context beyond “the industry was paralyzed by the pandemic.” For example, in 2022 we were at the height of the “streaming war”, and the large platforms published 599 seasons of original series, that is, more material than in the entire period 2015-2019. Granted, the pandemic had devastated more than one economy in the industry, but that volume of production also exhausted human resources, studies and calendars. When the forced shutdowns came, first due to the pandemic and then due to strikes, the bottleneck was inevitable. The counterpart: it works. The point is that contrary to what common sense might dictate, the report detects that the series that returned after more than thirty months of hiatus (that is, two and a half years) registered the highest search activity on the internet in the month of release. For example, ‘Stranger Things’ accumulated a 300% increase in views during the second half of 2025, before the premiere of its final season, with an especially strong rebound from the first season: it was new viewers discovering the series and fans reviewing previous episodes. ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Separación’ almost doubled the average engagement on their platforms. Movies on television. There is a possible reading of this data: the model of the blockbusters cinematographic films has migrated to television. If a highly anticipated movie in a franchise generates expectations months before its release, a highly anticipated season of a series does too, in a way that a routine annual release does not. Which is combined with another reason: sometimes highly complex series (effects, script, post-production, cast, as is the case with the three mentioned) require more time. The case of the second season of ‘Separation’ and its multiple rewrites It is significant. That is to say, just like blockbusters, there are series that require more filming time than average. Because of this, they take longer to see the light, but they also generate more expectation because the public expects the wait to be compensated with more spectacle. The risk. This practice can generate anticipation, yes, but there is a danger for the platforms that Ampere specifies: “Streamers need to balance production deadlines for big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around star titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” It is the phenomenon of churn and returnthat is, canceling a subscription and renewing it when the series returns, something that from the point of view of monthly income, is basically the same as not being subscribed. Generate excessive expectation or ensure a loyal and expectant audience, accustomed to an almost continuous supply of episodes, as is happening, for example, with ‘The Pitt’? Virtue lies in the middle ground, possibly: neither stretching the rope until it breaks nor suffocating the viewer with excess content. Late for that last one, on the other hand. In Xataka | 29 years later, Netflix has become the television it promised to replace. That’s why Wall Street has punished her Ampere analyst Christen Tamisin put it this way in the report: “Streamers need to balance the production timelines of big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around flagship titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” The paradox does not have a simple solution: reducing the wait can mean compromising the quality that, precisely, turns these series into events.

Two years later and with the help of Google, this is what Apple’s AI assistant does

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Apple promised a radically new Siri in 2024. It didn’t arrive. He promised it again in 2025. And it didn’t come either. Today, in the last keynote of Tim Cook as CEO, has finally presented the complete review of this wizardwhich now runs on the models of artificial intelligence (AI) from Google. Two years late. A multi-million dollar agreement with its biggest historical rival. And a question that hangs in the air: is it enough to make up for lost time? Several notes before we get into trouble. Apple pays approximately 1 billion dollars a year for licensing a custom Gemini model from Google with some 1.2 trillion parameters, according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg. It is not a built-in ChatGPT. Nor a direct access to Gemini. It’s a bit different: Apple distills those models to create versions optimized for local execution on iPhone and Mac with its own privacy requirements. But the brain belongs to Google. What Siri AI can do now Siri will continue to run on Apple devices, locally, and in this company’s private cloud, maintaining the apple company’s privacy standards. This is the biggest promise that Apple has made to us. And it simply means that Google provides artificial intelligence. And Apple provides the infrastructure, the chips and the promise that no one, not even Google, can access our data. For the first time, Siri has its own app with a dark interface, a text field, a microphone for voice mode and an icon to attach images and files. The conversations are saved in a history with optional expiration date and are synchronized via iCloud. It is, in essence, a direct competitor to ChatGPT and Gemini in Apple’s own ecosystem. Article in development…

Nissan has been giving a second life to its car batteries for years. In Melilla they use them as an anti-blackout system

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Nissan has once again focused its attention on one of its most unique Spanish projects. And it is that in a recent press releasethe company recovered the case of Melilla as an example of how it is promoting the “second life” of its electric car batteries. The installation It has been operating in the city for several years now.but the project remains one of Nissan’s central arguments to defend that a battery that is no longer useful to power a car still has a lot to contribute to the electrical grid. What exactly is it about? The project is called Second Life and was born from an alliance between Nissan, the energy group Enel (through its Spanish subsidiary Endesa) and the Italian company Loccioni, specialized in measurement and control systems. The idea is to take advantage of Nissan LEAF batteries that have finished their time in the car to set up a stationary energy storage system. According to advertisement When the company itself made the project public, the installation combines 48 used LEAF batteries with 30 new ones, for a total of 78 units. Why Melilla and not another city. Melilla is an unusual case within the electrical system in Spain, since it is isolated, is not connected to the national distribution network and depends entirely on a single thermal power plant operated by Endesa. In other words, if that plant falls, the entire city is left without electricity. And precisely that point makes the city the ideal setting to test backup systems like Nissan’s. How it works in practice. The battery pack acts as an emergency generator. It has a power of 4 MW and a capacity of up to 1.7 MWh of stored energy. If the plant is disconnected, the system can inject electricity into the Melilla grid for about 15 minutes. It may not seem like much, but it is the margin that is considered sufficient to reactivate the plant and restore the supply without the population noticing a prolonged outage. Come on, it serves as a cushion to avoid blackouts and keep the network stable (although it is not shockproof. such problematic blackouts like April 2025). An interesting technical detail. The system does not disassemble the batteries cell by cell. According to explains The company, when each pack is removed from a vehicle, is placed directly into the storage system just as it was mounted in the car. It is a way to reuse the assembly without a complex dismantling process, something that makes reuse cheaper and simpler. Strategy. The brand frames Second Life within its concept of the “4Rs”: reuse, remanufacture, resell and recycle. It is a circular economy logic, since a battery that loses performance in a car still retains a good part of its capacity, sufficient for uses where it is not required as much, such as fixed energy storage. Soufiane Elkhomri, Director of Nissan Energy Services for the AMIEO region, counted Furthermore, the collaboration with Enel allowed them to create “a model for the second life of a battery, which can be applied to many other use cases.” A first step. Melilla is just one piece in a broader commitment than Nissan replicate in other placessuch as the LEAF batteries that support the Fiumicino airport in Rome or some of its facilities in Japan. The idea is interesting, especially in terms of reusing a component as critical as a car battery. It remains to be seen, in any case, to what extent this type of solution becomes widespread as millions of electric vehicle batteries reach the end of their first life in the coming years. Cover image | Christelle Hayek and Giovanni Della Checa In Xataka | A ‘shitty plan’ to save the countryside: Europe turns to manure to tackle the fertilizer crisis

2,000 years ago the Romans sold perfumes in glass doves that could only be opened by breaking their necks.

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Despite their great efforts, the cities of the Roman Empire they didn’t smell good and well, it makes sense: they lived in conditions of high fecal contamination and also they used feces as medicine. Of course, to Caesar what belongs to Caesar: they had bottles to store their ointments and oils that, like the best current perfumes, promised a lot. Without going any further, the two bottles you see above these lines date from the 1st century AD, are from the Roman Empire and belong to the MET collection. Because from then on they knew that the (good) smell, coming from anointing oneself after bathing in hot springs, from incense from temples or from burials, was something more: it could be a language of status, identity and power. So for those smells they needed a container at their height that would turn the task of perfuming themselves into almost a ritual. For example, a dove. Dove-shaped jars. The ointments of the Romans were, in a nutshell, something like today’s ampoules: small ceramic or glass containers where they stored oils, commercial products or substances for funeral practices. blown glass arrive In the 1st century BC and 200 years later, the Romans were true virtuosos of glass manufacturing both in quality and quantity: according to the Penn Museummanufactured up to 100 million containers a year. These curious zoomorphic specimens in the shape of a bird and the size of which fit in the palm of the hand became so popular that they constitute a subcategory in themselves within their unguentary and it is common to find it in deposits. The method of use was practically identical to a vial: you have to break that small neck to access the contents inside. In this case, literally breaking the bird’s neck. In addition to its aesthetic value, they met their goal when storing valuable ointments: it protected the contents from excessive exposure to oxygen and helped to dose the amount poured. Why is it important. Converting ointment bottles into something more sophisticated in the shape of a bird constitutes one of the first and most striking cases of packaging and user experience (imagine that unboxing of an influencer of the time). Have a glass jar and also with this type of shapes It was a status indicator.as witnessed by the art of that period, where we see men and women perfumed after a visit to the hot springs. On the other hand and leaving aside the shape, these jars are the vestiges of the imperial commercial network: spices from India, resins from Arabia and locally grown flowers were used to make perfumes and ointments. If they also go to the laboratory, they constitute a valuable source of chemical data on Roman civilization and its customs. Without going any further, a laboratory analysis allowed identify a primal patchouli in an exhibition in Carmona (Seville). Context. Among these zoomorphic glasses the dove was the star: archaeological evidence suggests that the dove was one of the first birds domesticated by humans, so people learned its habits and characteristics and used it for messaging. On the spiritual level, they introduced it into their religious rituals and mythology. Thus, the dove was the sacred animal of Venus and she was often represented in statues with a dove perched on her hand or on her head. However, this relationship is much older: already in the Bronze Age, in Sumerian Mesopotamia, consists the association between doves and the mother goddess. Storing perfume in a container in the shape of your sacred animal is a fully conscious and coherent act. Yes, but. Many of these readings of the dove-shaped glass jars are hypotheses based on what we know about the Romans, but we don’t know for sure: these perfumes could well be for everyday use or for funeral rituals. Likewise, they were not exclusive objects of the wealthiest classes: the simplest ointments were within the reach of the popular classes and their shapes were refined over time. In short, the dove could have different meanings depending on who had it and what for. In Xataka | The fall of the Roman Empire has obsessed us for centuries: some economists believe they have the answer in 400,000 coins In Xataka | Almost 2,000 years ago a Celtiberian soldier visited the most remote frontier of the Roman Empire. Then he returned to Soria with a souvenir Cover | MET

60 years ago they sank a thousand-year-old church in a reservoir in Barcelona. Only the drought has brought it back to the surface

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He Sau swampin the Osona region (Barcelona), has a surprise: when the drought hits, lowering the level of the reservoir enough, it reveals a superb stone bell tower that has been submerged since 1962. The tower belongs to Sant Romà de Sau, a Romanesque church from the 11th century that the Franco regime sank (normally up to 23 meters deep) to supply water to Barcelona In fact, during the pressing crisis of 2023, the drought left it completely grounded, as NASA photographed from spaceThe fact that it is more than a thousand years old and still standing even though it lives submerged is commendable, but it is also the oldest church in the world that is still standing in water. according to the Official World Record. Once upon a church (and a town) submerged in a swamp. More specifically, the church of Sant Romà de Sau is in the Lombard Romanesque style and was consecrated in the year 1061. It was originally built with a single nave oriented from east to west and with a square bell tower three-story semi-detachedprecisely the one that can be seen when there is drought. The church that It is normally submerged at a depth of 23 meters It is not exactly the original: it has been accumulating interventions, such as a reform and expansion after the damage of an earthquake or a remodeling in the 19th century, when the apse was demolished and the orientation of the temple was changed. The bell tower is the vestige of what was once there: the church of a town that was also submerged. The settlement of Sant Romà data 917. Before the water level rose and flooded everything, there they lived 300 inhabitants in the middle of the 20th century who were dedicated to agriculture, livestock and forestry. That of Sant Romà is another story of towns submerged after the execution of the hydraulic project, which led to the expropriation of homes and agricultural farms, its inhabitants had to leave their home without taking part in the matter or receiving compensation. Context. The water that reaches the Catalan capital comes mainly from the Ter and Llobregat rivers through a network of reservoirs. In the case of the Ter, specifically the reservoirs of Sau and those of Susqueda and Pastry. The metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona suffered significant demographic growth during Franco’s development, so the infrastructure was no longer adequate. The construction of the reservoir falls precisely within those years, although the original project goes back to 1931 and the works did not begin until 1942. As the professor and director of the Department of History at the University of Santiago de Compostela Daniel Lanero explains to Newtral.es, what the Franco regime did was “give continuity to the hydraulic policy that had been put into practice since the end of the 19th century.” Beatriz García, professor of contemporary history at the University of León, explains the two bases of this water resources management policy: general plan of irrigation canals and swamps of 1902 and the national hydraulic works plan approved in the Second Republic. Why is it important. That this church breaks conservation records in such complicated conditions does not mean that it is eternal: in 1999 it was already had to be restored after decades under water due to the weakness of its structure. In any case, the church of Sant Romà de Sau is a clear example of the “submerged heritage“, a category in which archeology and cultural law have been trying to regulate for decades. without much success. The sinking of Sant Romà and its church is not an isolated case but a common practice of the Franco regime: the construction of reservoirs during the dictatorship led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people from their towns in a traumatic process of forced displacement of rooted places for its population. In the Spanish state alone there are about 500 towns that were swallowed up by the water due to the construction of dams and reservoirs. In Xataka | In World War II, a town in Lithuania buried its bell to protect it from the Nazis. They did not find it until 2024 In Xataka | For 60 years, a farmer with no idea about architecture built a cathedral from scratch in Madrid. The bureaucracy has closed it Cover | joan ggk and Quico Llach

Western scientists have been debating the origin of Kamo’oalewa for years. China went looking for him

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If everything goes according to schedule, the Chinese Tianwen-2 mission will be about to arrive at Kamo’oalewa, the co-orbital object on Earth to which it is heading to discern once and for all whether it is an asteroid or a lunar fragment. Actually this It is not the only coorbital on our planet. There are other objects that take exactly the same time as us to go around the Sun, so they can be said to be our traveling companions. However. z Kamo’oalewa has been one of the best characterized since it was discovered in 2016. Since then, European and American scientists have been striving to find out its origin, leaving the balance more tilted on some occasions towards the lunar fragment and on others towards the asteroid. But it is clear that to have a definitive answer we need to analyze samples of its surface. In order to obtain them, China jumped to the rescue. A mission to answer once and for all. The Tianwen-2 mission was launched in May 2025 bound for Kamo’oalewa. In the next few days it should reach the satellite, to start taking samples next month. The samples will later make the return journey and land on our planet in 2027 so that scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences can investigate them. Then we will finally know where our traveling companion comes from. Two hypotheses, many changes of opinion. Kamo’oalewa was first observed in April 2016, thanks to the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. That same year, a team of European scientists made his first characterization. Thanks to them we had very specific information about this object. For example, its orbit was calculated and its thermal inertia was analyzed. That is, the speed with which its surface responds to changes in temperature. After that characterization, further investigations were carried out at the Arizona Planetary Science Institute. From those analyzes two hypotheses emerged for its origin: it could be an asteroid that escaped from the asteroid belt or a fragment of the Moon that jumped from there due to a large impact. This last hypothesis arose from spectroscopic observations made with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT). The spectra indicated that this object is very rich in silicates, like the lunar samples collected on the Apollo missions. In addition, there was a reddish band that seemed to correspond to the spectrum of lunar soil that has received many impacts from micrometeorites and solar wind. The first hypothesis returns. This same year, a team of European scientists has carried out a new study in which the probabilities of both hypotheses are analyzed. Clearly, the asteroid option wins over the lunar fragment option. China to the rescue China to the rescue. As Tianwen-2 approaches Kamo’oalewa, Chinese scientists have begun to make their own characterizations from a distance. For example, a study was recently published in which they compared the spectrum they measured in Arizona with that of a chondrite bombarded by laser. The chondrites They are rocky asteroids that have impacted the Earth in the form of meteorites. Laser bombardment mimics the effects of several million years of impacts. When analyzing the spectrum of this manipulated chondrite, they saw a reddish band very similar to that of Kamo’oalewa. Therefore, it is possible that it is an asteroid rich in silicates. There doesn’t have to be just them. on the moon. Specifically, they believe that it may be from the Flora family, coming from the asteroid belt. The hypothesis that is winning. Currently the asteroid hypothesis wins, although there will be no clear answer until the Tianwen-2 samples reach Earth. After many debates by scientists from Europe and the United States, the answer will be brought by a Chinese ship. This, once again, shows us how important it is to work as a team to answer the big questions of the Universe. Image | 中国新闻社 In Xataka | There is a silent race to take over the Moon’s waves: dozens of companies have claimed part of its spectrum

A Chinese company has been building AI for years to predict who is going to criticize the government before they do so

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In ‘Minority Report‘, Tom Cruise was the head of the pre-crime police, a department capable of arresting criminals before they could commit the crime in question, all thanks to the powers of mutants or precogs. Well, according to the New York Timesthere is a Chinese company that is trying to build a similar system, but their target will be future political dissidents and instead of mutants with powers they will use AI. what’s happening. The leak reported in the New York Times contains internal documents from the Chinese company Geedge Networks and has been published by a group of researchers at Vanderbilt University. In it they detail how the company is building an AI system capable of predicting which citizens will become political dissidents in the future. Geedge is investigating how to use LLM to synthesize large packets of data (including browsing histories, locations, online activity and contacts) and then infer citizens’ behavior, detecting whether they will present a “political risk” in the future. Like the police precrime, but for political dissidents. What is Geedge?. In September 2025 we learned that a Chinese company was exporting the surveillance system known as “Great Firewall of China” to other countries. It was Geedge Networks. The company, which has one of the creators of the Chinese firewall as a key investor, has already sold its solution to countries such as Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. What this great firewall does is analyze the traffic of entire countries, even capturing personal data such as passwords and emails. Why is it important. According to the leak, the system is in the research phase, but it is still a disturbing approach. It is no longer just about using AI to monitor what people do, the next thing is to anticipate what they could do and even think. We see every day that AI models have biases and make many errors, using them as predictors to repress dissent poses a terrifying scenario. Tech authoritarianism as a service. As we said, Geedge is already exporting its solutions to other countries so it is selling technological authoritarianism as a service. The worst thing is that we do not find this only in China, but it is a global trend: the United States too you are delegating critical security functions to private and disreputable corporations like Palantir, and The United Kingdom also wants to follow in their footsteps. The bottleneck. There is good news (if you can call it that) and that is that Geedge has encountered a problem in developing this system: they do not have the power to manage such a volume of data. According to the New York Times, since they cannot access the most powerful chips due to the US blockade, since 2024 they have been forced to use AI models and less powerful chips. In order for the system to be able to manage the enormous amount of data they already collect, they need computing capacity that they currently do not have, always according to US sources. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | We have been hearing for years that China scans the faces of millions of citizens every day. It’s already happening in Europe

We were already using fire 800,000 years earlier than we thought

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He dominion of fire isWithout a doubt, the greatest turning point in the technological and evolutionary history of our lineage. It gave us warmth, it scared away predators and, by allowing us to cook food, it triggered the development of our brains and also our own lives. Until now, the scientific consensus placed the strongest evidence of its early use at around one million years, although this is no longer the case. A new study. a new study published in PLOS ONE takes us to Wonderwerk Cave, in the northern Cape province of South Africa. This site was already “old acquaintance” for paleoanthropologists, since in 2012 a team demonstrated the existence of fire on site in layer 10 of the cave, dated to approximately one million years. And this is important because from here the consensus was created about when humans discovered fire. But the story didn’t end there. The new study has descended one more step in time, specifically to layer 11 of the same cave and there they have found burned bones with an age that ranges between 1.07 and 1.79 million years. And it is vital. The location of the remains is vital, since they were found 30 meters deep inside the cavern. This completely rules out that the fire marks are the product of a random forest fire or a lightning strike, but rather that someone had to carry those flames there after learning to control the fire. A new debate. The evidence that suggests that our past knew how to make fire is much later, since in sites such as Gesher Benot Ya’aqov In Israel, total control of technology is already shown. What this new finding raises is whether these Homo erectus early people did not know how to light a fire from scratch. What is proposed is that instead they were “thieves” of nature, since they took advantage of natural fires caused by lightning or volcanoes, collected the embers and transported them inside the cave to keep them alive as long as possible. A technique that, although it seems simple, entails great cognitive and social complexity. The technology. If the fire in layer 11 had not been confirmed until now, it is because it is incredibly difficult to distinguish a bone burned almost two million years ago from a fossilized bone that has undergone chemical alterations. And it is no wonder, since with the passage of millennia, diagenetic processes such as fluoridation or the accumulation of manganese can darken the fossils, giving them a false appearance of having been carbonized. But now we have very important tools, such as luminescence techniques combined with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, which allow us to reveal chemical secrets at the molecular level. A new paradigm. The experts who have given their opinion on this study through the Science Media Center Spain such as Joaquín Panera or researchers specialized in fire such as Aitor Burguet-Coca agree in describing the methodological protocol as “innovative”, highlighting that it opens the door to reevaluate huge collections of fossils in other sites, such as Koobi Fora in Kenya, where there are ambiguous signs of fire 1.5 million years ago. In Xataka | We had always believed that evolution had been arrested for thousands of years. The redheads were telling us the opposite

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