spain

Ferrari-red robots greet visitors to Santander Bank

Bored with your bank? Spain's Santander banking group has introduced sexy, autonomous robots to escort visitors around its lavish headquarters outside Madrid.

The sleek crimson droids, dubbed Santander Interactive Guest Assistants (SIGAs), show up once you step into the bank's opulent El Faro Visitors Center, located on a 400-acre financial campus. In the giant glass cube that serves as the entrance hall, a console with a touch-panel screen takes your destination and summons a robot via Wi-Fi. Then you're off, following your wheeled usher as it plays ambient music.

The SIGA robots operate on a multi-agent programming system designed by YDreams, a Portuguese IT company. The firm says the robo-butlers are one of the first applications of swarm robotics, the decentralized control of relatively simple machines, to a commercial setting. … Read more

Spain arrests three accused of running huge botnet

Authorities in Spain have arrested three men accused of operating a massive botnet composed of 12.7 million PCs that stole credit card and bank log-in data and infected computers in half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 banks, according to published reports.

The botnet "Mariposa," which means butterfly in Spanish, first appeared in December 2008 and grew to be one of the largest botnets ever, The Associated Press reported. It spread the Butterfly worm via removable drives, MSN Messenger, and peer-to-peer programs and targets Windows XP and older systems.

Unlike many underground hackers, … Read more

Spanish robot can name that tune

A musically gifted robot out of Spain promises to identify a song when you hum it, whistle it, strum chords on the guitar, or play the piano. It can then classify the tune according to musical style and suggest similar songs you might like. In addition, it can determine whether a singer is male or female and group pieces accordingly.

The robot, apparently a Lego Mindstorms NXT, is one of a series of musically inclined bots being created at the University of Malaga to make and manage musical content.

In addition to the song-recognizing robot, the Malaga researchers developed a … Read more

Spain mandates affordable broadband for all

Spanish officials said earlier this week that the government will require service providers to offer broadband with speeds of at least 1 Mbps at regulated rates to residents living anywhere in the country.

The Spanish telecommunications minister issued a statement Tuesday declaring that broadband would be added to the country's so-called "universal service," which guarantees reasonably priced telephone service to citizens, Reuters reported. The goal is to offer affordable broadband with speeds of at least 1 Mbps to residents by 2011.

To achieve this goal the Spanish government will require any service provider that gets universal service … Read more

Solar plant to store energy in molten salt

SolarReserve and Preneal have garnered the necessary permit to build a 50-megawatt thermal-solar plant in Spain that will use molten salt to store and release solar energy, the companies said Wednesday.

The project will be built in Alcazar de San Juan, a town about 110 miles south of Madrid. The environmental permit that will allow the construction of a project using molten salt was issued by the local Castilla-La Mancha government.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based start-up, SolarReserve uses a fairly unique method to offer power from a solar plant even after the sun sets.

While the sun is shining, … Read more

Hair test reveals travel, lifestyle

The analysis of a single hair can reveal where a person is from and where they've been, which could allow government agencies to track the travels of international criminals and terror suspects, according to researchers.

Researchers measuring the longitudinal sulfur isotopic variations in a strand of human hair can detect slight changes in people's diets to show where and whether they've traveled, while shedding light on their lifestyle, according to a study published this month in the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

The new method combines a laser ablation system and multicollector inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-MC-ICP-MS), … Read more

Record deal for boosted solar panels

SolFocus, a maker of concentrator photovoltaic systems, has signed a $103 million (80 euro) deal with Empe Solar, a Spanish group that promotes solar energy use.

Concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems typically use lenses and mirrors to concentrate light on solar cells to maximize the amount of electricity they can generate.

SolFocus plans to install over 10 megawatts of CPV systems across southern Spain for Empe Solar between now and 2010 as part of the deal.

SolFocus has already completed three utility-scale projects in Spain.

The 10-megawatt installation would collectively generate enough energy to supply a town of 40,000 residents, … Read more

The 404 161: Where we shock the monkey

On the show today: Justin calls in from bed, the Spanish Olympic basketball team is a bunch of racists, some chicks are using wide contact lenses to achieve "Anime eyes," fake porn inspectors, and putting Lojack in your PS3.

Sorry--today's post just won't be as long as Justin wants. It's just not gonna happen. We don't understand how he finds the time to do it anyway, so we're not gonna try and do it ourselves.

With Justin's trip to the "doctor," it leaves Wilson and I to fend for ourselves … Read more

The 404 149: Where you can call us now for your free reading

After one of our listeners calls us out on our truly awful Jamaican impression, we try, try, try again--unsuccessfully. It doesn't work out so well, and we slowly start to sound like a Jamaican extradited from Ireland. Anyway...today's episode finally reveals the secret pre-show juice that powers the enthusiasm we bring you everyday: crunk juice! And, by crunk juice we mean orange juice! All this segues into our first story, where we lay the smackdown on 50 Cent for getting a little trigger happy south of the border. Jeff decides to change 50's name to "… Read more