Month: October 2025

OpenAI teamed up with NVIDIA and made circular financing fashionable. Anthropic has returned the ball with a surprise girlfriend: Google

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Let’s see if we were going to believe that OpenAI was going to be the only one to look for powerful allies. Nothing of that: Anthropic just did the same and has announced an eye-catching agreement with Google. The AI ​​startup will have access to up to one million Google TPUs in a pact that is worth “tens of billions of dollars.” Less noise, but a lot of nuts. The figures of the agreement are modest if we compare them with those that OpenAI has managed in its circular financing agreements with NVIDIA, amd either Broadcombut here Anthropic seems to take a very different position. Compared to colossal projects like Stargate, Anthropic’s idea is focused on execution. Without making much noise, the company led by Dario Amodei has been gradually conquering the business sector. More than 1 GW of computing capacity. On CNBC indicate that this investment will allow the creation of a data center with a computing capacity greater than 1 GW and have it ready in 2026. It is estimated that a center of these characteristics would cost about 50,000 million dollars, of which about 35,000 million would be dedicated to AI chips. It may not be comparable to Stargate and the idea of ​​investing $500 billion in data centers, but the alliance between Anthropic and Google is significant. More than circular financing. The partnership certainly features elements of circular financing, but it is more of a symbiotic relationship with that cross-investment component. The dynamic is simple and is now completed with that commercial return. The agreement requires Anthropic to buy or rent infrastructure services from Google Cloud. Virtuous circle. With its original investment in Anthropic, Google helped that company grow, which in turn allows Anthropic not only the ability to grow, but the need for enormous computing power… provided by Google. In essence, some of the money Google invests in Anthropic returns to Google Cloud as revenue. The vicious (or virtuous, as they say in the US) circle is complete. Anthropic diversifies. Anthropic’s AI models are trained and used using infrastructure from various manufacturers. Thus, they use both Google TPUs and Amazon Trainium processors and NVIDIA GPUs: each platform is assigned to a specialized workload. In the case of Google’s TPUs, according to Anthropic the focus is “its strong price/performance ratio and its efficiency.” Promising successes, but… Anthropic’s growth is evident, and its annualized revenue rate (ARR) is now estimated to reach $7 billion. Claude Code, its developer assistant, managed to generate 500 million dollars after just two months on the market. But as always, that revenue can’t hide the fact that Anthropic, like other AI startups, you continue to spend much more money than you earn. Amazon is your other great ally. In fact, the company led by Andy Jassy has invested around $8 billion, when official data indicates that Google has invested $3 billion. AWS is still considered the largest infrastructure provider for Anthropic, and its supercomputer Project Rainierbased on the Trainium 2, allows you to have a large computing capacity for every dollar invested, they point out on Amazon. The company’s influence is not only financial: it is structural. Image | Wikimedia | Fortune Brainstorm Tech In Xataka | You thought you had an amazing connection on Tinder, but you were actually chatting with ChatGPT

What are they and how can you reserve them?

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WhatsApp is preparing for its biggest change in years: usernames. It is an identification system that alternatives like Telegram have been using for years, and it gives you an extra layer of privacy when you want to contact someone. Although This feature is not yet availablewe are going to explain to you what exactly it will be used for so that you understand its importance. And we will also tell you what it will be the process to reserve yours. What are usernames WhatsApp usernames are a unique identification method so other people can find you. The idea is that each person who uses WhatsApp can claim a name that no one else will have. Currently, if you want to give your contact to another person so that they can write to you on WhatsApp, you have to give them your phone number. Then, by searching for that number, the other person will be able to find you and write to you. The username will be an alternative to the phone numberso they can also find you with him. It will also be used to log in to the account. Each user may have a single name, but The first one to set it up will keep it.. This means that if you have a common name, like Maria, the name @maria may fly very quickly, and you will have to add other characters such as numbers or additional letters. Here, remember that your username will be foreverso you will have to look for one that identifies you so that it is as personal as possible. Ideally, it would be easy to type so that they can find you, but in a service with billions of users this will end up being difficult. How can you get your name Image: Iván Linares WhatsApp has not yet announced this feature or when it will arrive. However, The normal thing would be for it to reach the beta version first of the application. Therefore, if you want to be one of the first people to reserve your name, it is recommended sign up for the WhatsApp beta on your mobile. Then you will have to wait for the feature to launchsomething that seems increasingly closer. Once WhatsApp starts allowing you to reserve the name, you will have to go to the application and enter the settings. Inside, you will have to tap on your profile photo at the top of the screen to enter your account settingswhere you configure information about yourself. In them, you can currently edit your name, information, phone number or your links. The username field will also appear here when the function is launched. When you click on one, you will go to the process to create a username. And that’s it. Now you will only have try names until you find one free. For example, if you type “pepito” you may see a red indicator saying that it is busy. Then, you will have to add characters or change letters until you find one that is free. In Xataka Basics | Send WhatsApp messages to yourself: How to do it and 11 uses for the function

Science has found the secret of the giant tomato, but it may be at the cost of destroying its good flavor

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Imagine being able to take a small, bitter, wild eggplant and with a single genetic tweak, turn it into a very different variety, much larger and ready for the market. This, it seems something out of a science fiction movieit may be a reality that is getting closer, as one pointed out published study in the magazine Nature who deciphered the genetic “instruction manual” of the entire eggplant family and also the tomato. The problem. We are currently living in a time in which the climate is changing radically. with increases in temperatures or reduction in rainfall that reach our fields. This forces us to have a ‘plan B’ in the bedroom that allows us to continue having crops efficiently and to be able to feed an entire population despite there being a climate decline. And genetics in this case is preparing for it with different changes. The agriculture of the genetically modified foods is starting to gain strength. The fact of modifying the seed of a fruit so that it comes out with significant improvements, such as being juicier, larger or more efficient, is the future of agri-food engineering. And all to be able to respond to an increasingly growing demand for food, but with a space suitable for it that is smaller. A commitment to flavor. But these genetic alterations raise many questions. The goal right now is to have fat tomatoes or eggplants that are also very elongated but without thinking about anything else. If we eat a tomato on many occasions what we want is for it to be juicy and good. But genetic modification may overlooks these types of essential components to be more ‘productive’ and nutritious. But the objective in this case of the investigation that is currently being carried out is on size. And if one tomato ‘from the future’ can be equivalent to three ‘current’ ones, the truth is that we will have taken a very important step. And this is already being seen. The investigation. An international team of scientists has created the first “pangenome“of the genus Solanum. This is not only the tomato and eggplant family, but also the potato and dozens of other crops consumed locally around the world, and which opens the door to a great evolution in the field of food and the agri-food industry. The objective. For the researchers, the objective was quite clear from the first moment: to know why a gene that produces a desirable trait, such as having a larger fruit in a tomato, does not work when tried to apply it to an eggplant. The answer in this case is quite clear: genetic redundancy. The obstacle. In this case, scientists saw that the main obstacle to this genetic modification not being applied was in gene duplications, known as paralogues. In order to understand this concept we can imagine the light in a room that would be our phenotype and that in order to turn it off we need to press two switches that control it. These switches are what we know as paralogs, and in order to turn off the light it would be necessary to deactivate both. This is what happens in many species, which have created ‘backup copies’ of their switches so that turning off just one would do absolutely nothing and would not materialize in their phenotype, such as their size. That is why this team analyzed 22 species of Solanum and discovered that, although the overall structure of chromosomes is similar, thousands of key genes have undergone different variations throughout their evolution. The brake gene. Scientists have long known that a gene called CLAVATA3 (CLV3) is the master regulator of fruit size in tomatoes. Its function is, basically, to act as a brake. It tells stem cells at the plant’s growing points (the meristems) when to stop dividing. Thus, when this gene is mutated or ‘off’ the brake is released and the plate produces more cells, resulting in larger flowers with more seed compartments and also a much larger fruit. And here is the key to how a tomato will end up being domesticated. The problem is that the tomato has an additional “handbrake”, which is a paralogous gene called CLE9. In this way, even if we alter CLV3, it will not have its full effect, since it will have this extra switch that must also be altered. CRISPR. It is a genetic ‘editing weapon’ that will allow us to achieve the effect we want and cut the brake on CLV3 so that the fruits can evolve. The scientists ran the tests on the African eggplant, a species that lost its CLE9 handbrake a long time ago, but has a functional copy of CLV3. When scientists used CRISPR to deactivate that only functional copy, the result was massive and uncontrolled growth, demonstrating that that gene was the only brake he had left. In another experiment, we used S.prinophyllum that did not have CLE9, but did have two units of CLV3 (CLV3a and CLV3b). In this case, when the researchers edited a single copy, the brake was weakened and the plant produced fruits with more lobes and therefore slightly larger fruits. But when they removed the two brakes, uncontrolled growth was seen again. The surprise find. While research was being carried out along these lines, experts saw something they did not expect: a completely different gene on chromosome 2 called SaetSCPL25-like acted as the main size “switch” in the African eggplant. Something that responded to a small natural mutation of this gene that was associated with the additional locules per fruit. To check this, they did the experiment in reverse. They took this new gene and they cracked it with CRISPR on a standard tomato. The result in this case is that fruits were produced with more locules, that is, they were much larger. In this way, the researchers had found a second genetic path to increase the size of the fruit in addition to breaking its brakes. … Read more

The signs that the system is broken are increasingly evident

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On October 17, 2023, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (the professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania) gave an interview in El Mundo with a very simple headline “it shows: (in Spain) everything works badly.” Everyone thought it was exaggerated, sensationalist. But then it came the DANA (and its management), the April blackoutthe Redsys repeated crash and the payment system, fire chaos and, finally, the Andalusian mammography scandal. What began as an (apparently) isolated complaint has become a deep institutional crisis for Andalusian healthcare. But the problem goes much further, the request for data from the Ministry of Health to the rest of the communities has revealed that Spain has a huge problem with all this, that in fact in Spain more and more things are working poorly. The mammography crisis. Although the first complaints surfaced at the beginning of 2024 and the affected associations met with the Board during the summer, until the first cases reached the media, the Ministry of Health did not recognize that more than 2,000 women may not have been informed of a questionable lesion after screening. What came next was chaos: after limiting the problem to a single Hospital, they were forced to recognize a widespread problem and implement a “shock plan” that no one knows very well how it will be implemented. And, in the midst of this commotion, the Ministry of Health asked the communities for data to know how screening was working throughout the country. many of them they have refused (although not all). The prosecution has taken letters in the matter. The underlying problem. Because, honestly, we run the risk of thinking that all this is nothing more than another political battle: a partisan scuffle that, this time, has acquired the format of a health controversy. The clearest example is that the PP Health Ministers they just left en bloc the Interterritorial Health Council; while the Ministry accuses the communities of “hiding” the screening data because it is “bad” and shows their “incompetence.” But not. It is enough to analyze the data of any community to see that the underlying problem is that healthcare is increasingly having problems addressing the care burden it has on it. The case of Madrid is paradigmatic because, even though protocols are well designed On paper, “in most public centers the lists and the average waiting time grow” year after year. Similar problems we can see throughout the country. How deep is this crisis? That is surely the worst of all: that we still cannot know how deep the problem is because the opacity of the Spanish institutional framework is enormous. It is true that this is not exclusively a Spanish problem: we still remember thehe confidence with which public health systems Westerners that they would be able to detect COVID and block it before it arrived to their respective populations. Shortly after, Italy’s outbreak broke out. What we don’t know is costing us our health. Civio has been researching for years as primary care is drowninghow public psychological care is almost a chimera, how dozens of health services depend on where you live and how, little by little, health is falling into the hands of private interests. But even that doesn’t explain the problem we are in. Because the central issue is that we don’t even know how we are. We also don’t know where we are going. And that is the worst of all: it removes the very possibility of us taking the reins and coming up with solutions. Image | Junta of Andalusia | NCI In Xataka | Predicting breast cancer five years before it appears, possible thanks to artificial intelligence

Nike wants to make slow runners faster. Your solution: powered sneakers

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Nike has sneakers that you can put on without touching with your hands and even some that they tie themselves. The brand has just crossed a new frontier: that of motorized footwear that helps you walk and run faster. With a design reminiscent of an exoskeleton, Nike compares it to the operation of the electric bicycle. Project Amplify. This is how they have named this footwear system, which is currently in the testing phase. For its creation, Nike has partnered with the robotics company Dephy. It consists of a shoe and an ankle brace with a motor and rechargeable battery that transmits energy through a transmission belt. The shoe can be worn alone or with the ankle brace. Booster. What Project Amplify does is “increase the natural movement of the lower leg and ankle”, that is, it gives us a boost to be able to walk or run faster and for longer with the same effort. According to Nike, it is a system similar to that of electric bicycles whose motor assists us in pedaling and helps reduce the energy demand of the muscles. Nike says it’s like having “a second set of calf muscles.” Hacking speed. Nike has invested heavily in research and development to design footwear that drives athletic performance. Its previous innovations have focused on combining cutting-edge designs and advanced materials that offer a “rebound” or propulsion effect. An example is Vaporfly technology, which proved to be a determining factor in achieving records in major marathons. This is the case of the controversial record of Eliud Kipchoge, who ran a marathon under two hours. There is also the case of the Nike Super Spikes that were worn by several athletes during the Tokyo Olympics. The impact was undeniable: Up to three athletes broke the record in the 400 meter hurdles. Examples like this highlight the importance of footwear and opened the debate about the limits of technology in sports. Even It has come to be described as “mechanical doping”. For the slow ones. At the moment we will not see “motorized” athletes in the Olympics. Nike makes it clear that it is not a system designed for high-level athletes, but for amateurs. running with a rather low pace who want to go faster with less effort. We are talking about runners with a pace greater than 6 or 7 minutes per kilometer. Another use scenario for these motorized shoes is to be able to make urban trips more quickly, for example to go to work on foot. Images | Nike In Xataka | The Alicante sneakers that are succeeding in Silicon Valley and that have Zuckerberg as their best ambassador

The best-selling car in Spain is the Dacia Sandero. And we are teaming up with France to defend the jump to electric cars

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Rarely can it be said that France and Spain are teaming up to achieve the same objective. At the same time They torpedo themselves as much as they can on the high speed railway or what they face each other directly because of the energetic connectionsthe electric car seems to have united the two countries. At the same time that the European Union seems to be cracking regarding its positions on the electric car, France and Spain have not hesitated in positioning itself to defend possible modifications to a regulation led by Germany. The Germans are pushing to open the door to combustion engines and countries like Italy seem convinced that it is the way to go. However, from Spain we have put many efforts to electrify our industrywe are embracing a good part of the models that should power Europeans in the coming years. France has also done everything possible to embrace the technology that, until recently, almost all of Europe defended as the best for the future. What is being played? The eternal and convoluted European bureaucracy In 2023, European countries They voted to ban combustion engines from 2035. The ban left almost any technology that did not rely on electric or hydrogen out of play. First of all, we must understand what the European Union roadmap is. The plan is to drastically reduce the volume of emissions from heavy and light transport. Among the measures proposed, 2025 should be the year from which manufacturers would receive a fine of 95 euros for each car sold and for each gram of CO2/km exceeded in their average emissions at the end of the year. This has not been fulfilled and the manufacturers, who They expected billion-dollar fineswill be accountable in 2027 taking as reference the average emissions for the period 2025-2027. That is, if everything remains the same, whoever does not comply in this year 2025 must compensate in the coming years. From 2030, the emissions limit is drastically reduced. The 49.5 gr/km of CO2 raised They leave any car with a combustion engine that is not highly electrified in the lurch. In fact, with the changes approved for plug-in hybrids, their sale is not a great guarantee when it comes to lowering emissions. Reducing these involves, yes or yes, selling electric cars. And when 2035 arrives, cars with combustion engines that emit CO2 will not be able to be sold. This is important. The original wording spoke of “polluting emissions” and was finally changed to “CO2 emissions”. This makes sense because a fuel cell car can generate some polluting emissions in its electrolysis process but does not emit CO2. The first draft left everything that was not electric out of the market. Finally, it was approved that cars with combustion engines will be prohibited from emitting CO2. But also the door was left open to e-fuels or synthetic fuels. These fuels trap CO2 for their production, so it is considered that the emissions produced in the engine are being compensated. Europe still has to debate whether to finally approve the proposal that would allow these cars to be sold. The intention is that, if approved, these cars They will only be able to circulate with e-fuels and they must have sensors to prevent them from operating with traditional fuels or a mixture of synthetic and traditional fuels. But, in addition, the 2023 approval in which the ban on selling cars with combustion engines was confirmed already included the obligation to present a report before December 31, 2026 by the European Commission reporting on the progress that was being made. This report has been brought forward to 2025 and it is being studied. It will depend on him whether, finally, any type of modification is carried out. Europe divided Faced with this situation, Europe is divided. Despite the votes and the fact that the regulations should be firm, countries such as Germany and Italy and manufacturers are pushing for the current ban on combustion engines not to be maintained as drafted in 2035. Spain and France have presented a document in which they reaffirm their position in defense of the current prohibitions. This comes after the European Commission confirmed that will advance the review at the end of this year of the current state of the regulations, which can open the door to modifications and more lax regulations. In it document They reject favoring the use of plug-in hybrids since they consider that they emit more polluting particles than those reflected in the current tests and assure that “subterfuges should not be enabled that allow us to escape the ‘zero emissions’ objective for 2035”, in words collected by EFE. The document is, as we said, the response to the pressure that countries like Germany and Italy are exerting. The Germans have even asked, directly, that the ban on selling cars with combustion engines be eliminated. They assure that allowing synthetic fuels will leave us with “cleaner mobility”. Italy is the other big obstacle that the French and Spanish are encountering. Since Giorgia Meloni came to power has pointed out the regulations as wrong already approved that should prohibit the sale of engines that generate CO2. Like France and Spain, Germany and Italy also go hand in hand but in this case they have signed a document in which they consider that the current emissions regulations contemplate “disproportionate penalties.” And here comes what can change everything. In Germany and Italy they believe that the volume of emissions must be taken into account “throughout the entire value chain or through the use of renewable fuels.” That is, each brand should be analyzed taking into account how many emissions it produces not only during the burning of the fuel in its engines, but also during its production. The final objective seems clear: if the manufacturer saves on emissions during its production, the engines should have room to expel that CO2 that the brand is already compensating during its production. That is, … Read more

Science already knows why they generate an indestructible bond with their grandchildren.

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It is often said that some family traits skip a generation, and we have some scientific evidence that this is true. But people have four grandparents. Are there any that have some evolutionary favoritism when it comes to perpetuating their traits? The secret of longevity. Scientists have been asking for years why humans survive for a long period of time. after their reproductive agesomething that differentiates us from practically all animals, even those closest to us evolutionarily. This is especially notable since women generally live many years past menopause. We still don’t have a clear answer to this question, but the “grandmother’s hypothesis” postulates that the reason is that the presence of these relatives represented a survival advantage for the little ones. Evidence of the importance of grandmothers. Theories are of little use without evidence to support them, and one of the first was provided by Finnish researchers in a study published in the magazine Current Biology. In it they verified that the survival of children between 2 and 5 years old was positively correlated with the presence of grandmothers. The researchers found that the age and general health of the grandmothers were also associated with that of the child: the older and more frail the grandmothers, the less the benefits. The results were similar whether the grandmothers were maternal or paternal, except when they were very old or in poor health. Health status matters. This is where one of the most curious results of this study can be found: the possibility of competition. The authors postulated that grandmothers in worse condition could have a negative effect on the well-being of their grandchildren by “competing” for care, that is, since adults in good health should distribute these tasks among more people. This effect was greater in the case of paternal grandmothers, although the authors explain why. Different forms of care. The way in which ties are established can also have a lot to do with how relationships are established in families. The idea that parents take on a harsh role in the upbringing of children, while grandparents tend more towards indulgence, is widespread. A sort of familiar good cop and bad cop that makes us see people in a different way. And why science can have it too: a study, this one published in the magazine Proceedings of the Royal Society B analyzed the brain responses of grandmothers to images of two family generations and other control images. The team observed that the brain response was more pronounced with grandchildren even with the children. Environment and genetics. Not everything depends on care. Genetics matter too. One of the most obvious reasons is the possible presence of certain diseases that can manifest in the first years of life, many of which may have a genetic origin. This is where we can find a curious fact brought to light by biostatistics. Clarice R. Weinberg through an article published in the magazine American Journal of Human Genetics. In it he reported a curious anomaly with respect to what genetics predicted, and it was a greater matrilineal genetic contribution. The explanation given in the article was the transfer of phenotypes between mother and offspring during the nine months of pregnancy. Therefore, the genetic imprint of the maternal grandmothers would be greater than that left by the rest of the ancestors. Although the difference is not great, the effects can be great when it concerns diseases related to genetics, some of them serious. Matrilineal inheritance. Matrilineal genetic inheritance has greatly helped scientific development, in this case thanks to mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA, which is transmitted solely and exclusively through the mother, has allowed us to solve the most varied mysteries, from crimes until the death of the cave bearand of course, it has helped us better understand our origins. Each family, a world. Tolstoy began his Anna Karenina by saying the famous phrase: “All happy families are similar to each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It will surely fall short because surely every happy family is also a world. This implies that differences can be large from one family unit to another, but also between countries and regions and between periods. It is difficult to know what will the relationships be like? between alternate generations in the future, but at least we are getting a better idea of the bases of this relationship. Image | Ekaterina Shakharova In Xataka | The connection between a grandmother and her grandchildren is greater than with her children. And science has studied why

What it is, what games you have access to, and how to get more titles

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We are going to tell you everything you need to know about Amazon Luna free for Amazon Prime users. The online store has changed the strategy with its cloud gaming platform, and allows users who have a Prime subscription to access its basic version. Let’s start by briefly reminding you what it is Amazon Moonand then we will tell you which version of the platform you can access and what different versions you have. Then we will tell you how to get more games, and how to start playing and where you can do it from. What is Amazon Luna Amazon Luna is a streaming video game platform. This means that they are games that you will not play locally by installing them on your computer, but rather you will connect through the Internet to the servers of this service to play them remotely. The advantage of this service, which is a competitor to others such as NVIDIA GeForce Now either Xbox Game Pass the thing is you don’t need a powerful computer nor modern for current games, since you don’t have to install anything. When it comes to playing, the operation is as follows. The video games you play They are installed on Amazon serversand you connect to them through this platform. You will need a controller connected to the computer or device you are going to play on, in addition to having a good Internet connection. In addition, Luna has its own controller that also connects directly to the servers, although on the computer you can use a keyboard and mouse. The good thing about the controller is that when it connects to Luna and not to your device, when you press the button it goes directly to the servers of this platform without first going through the device, which makes the response time shorter. Amazon includes Luna within the services of its Prime subscription. This means that If you pay for Amazon Prime you can use Luna and many of the games included. Not all, because you will only have access to those in your basic subscription. You can play Luna on multiple devices. You can do it on any computer with a browser, on Android with its own app, iOS and iPad with a browser, Fire TV devices and some Samsung and LG televisions. The way to use Amazon Luna is simple. You simply enter the file of a game that you like in its catalog and you click on the play button to start it in the browser or device, using the controls you have linked. What games do you have access to? Amazon Luna has two versions, the standard and the premium. Your Prime subscription gives you access to the standard version, which has fewer games. The catalog is limited, although there are some big name gamesfrom popular ones like Fortnite to recent ones like Hogwarts Legacy or the latest Indiana Jones game. You also have access to the GameNight group gameswith which you can play with other people on the same television by sharing a link, and accessing titles with cooperative mode. How to get more games on Luna In addition to the games that are included in the Prime subscription, you can also pay 10 euros per month for the premium subscriptionwhich has a larger catalog of games. You will also be able to link your accounts from other services such as GOG, EA, Electronic Arts or Ubisoft. This will not allow you to play all the games purchased on them, but it will allow you to play some of them. Furthermore, there are also a game storealthough its operation is complex. In some cases you will buy them directly from Luna, but in other cases You buy them through the linked services store. For example, from Luna you can buy a compatible GOG game to play streaming. In these cases, if you buy a game from another platform through the Luna store, you will also buy it on this platform. Come on, then you can also use it independently. Finally, Amazon has long allowed you claim free gamesand this has now somehow been linked to Luna with the web luna.amazon.es/claims. In it, from time to time they offer you free paid games, both for Luna and for third-party stores. In Xataka Basics | Amazon Luna, analysis: Amazon’s cloud play is pure potential. You just need to exploit it

“Steal everything from grandmothers”

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GoogleXcoder is the alias from the 25-year-old Brazilian arrested in Cantabria a couple of weeks agoaccused of directing the largest operation of phishing banking that Spain has suffered. His group, ‘Team GXC’, cloned 35 financial institutions and emptied the accounts of thousands of clients. The Civil Guard arrested him along with six other members of the network after more than a year of monitoring. Why is it important. This case marks a turning point in Spanish cybercrime. The GXC did not only steal: according to a report by The Worldthey also rented their tools to other criminals for up to 900 euros a day. The multiplier effect turned each day into dozens of banks supplanted and millions stolen. His name on Telegram sums up the philosophy: “Steal everything from grandmothers.” The method. They combined phishing traditional with malware for Android, a double scam that nullified any security barrier: First, they captured bank details through fake websites. The malware then collected additional documents, digital signatures, and passwords. With that arsenal, they emptied accounts without leaving any apparent trace. The investigation. Group-IB, a cybersecurity firm that collaborates with Interpol, detected the threat in 2023. Anton Ushakovhis head of investigations in Europe, alerted the UCO of the Civil Guard when he confirmed that Spain was the epicenter. For months they tracked IP addresses bouncing around global servers until they located the mastermind: a digital nomad who changed provinces every few weeks. GoogleXcoder used stolen identities for its phone lines and cards. He lived with his family, constantly moving between provinces, believing himself to be invulnerable. The agents followed him while they gathered enough evidence. They hunted him in San Vicente de la Barquera, a town with less than 4,000 inhabitants, with their devices full of evidence as well as wads of cash. The UCO has published both the moment of his arrest and a recording of the tool used: The scope. The network operated from Spain but its tentacles reached Slovakia, the United Kingdom, the United States and South America. Six people directly linked fell in simultaneous operations in Valladolid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, ​​Palma, San Fernando and La Línea. The forensic analysis of their cryptocurrencies took more than a year due to the complexity of the network. The collaboration between Group-IB and the UCO sets a precedent: Until now, private cybersecurity companies mainly worked with Europol or Interpol. This time, identifying a specific threat against Spain, they shared findings directly with national forces. The result: one of the largest operations against cybercrime in our country, as recognized by the UCO itself. In Xataka | They seemed like useful tools for WhatsApp Web, but they were part of a large spam campaign Featured image | UCO

We have to start calling what is happening in Venezuela by its name. The “other” US bombers have arrived

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May America return to “walk” bombers strategic actions against Venezuela gives shape to an idea: this is no longer a tactical whim, it is a military campaign that moves on a dangerous border between ambiguity and prelude of something of greater significance. Not only that: the presence in the air, sea and territorial periphery of a country without the capacity for military parity introduces a geopolitical message directed towards third partiesand places the region before an unprecedented scenario. The visible phase. United States has done it again. Now they have been B-1 Lancer (long-range bombers, high payload and supersonic speed) from Dyess (Texas) to the outskirts of Venezuelawithout entering sovereign airspace but close enough to constitute an unequivocal signal of availability of remote fire. These flights are added to previous demonstrations with B-52 and F-35B, and are part of a expanded deployment which includes eight warships, a submarine, P-8 maritime patrol, MQ-9 Reaper and a squadron of F-35s already advanced in the theater. The novelty is not the capacity but the frequency: what used to be an annual exercise has become a sustained cadence that Pentagon officials already hint will grow, under the operational argument of surveillance and destruction of boats, but with a clear transition potential to fixed targets ashore. What the bombers reveal. Air traffic scans showed pairs of B-1 with BARB21/22 and nodal planes (KC-135 for replenishment, RC-135 ISR and a E-11A BACN) composing architecture of command, link and persistence typical of complex operations, not symbolic gestures. The immediate precedent of the B-52 in the same areadescribed by the Department of Defense itself as a “demonstration of attack”, reinforces the reading that Washington is setting up an environment from which it will be able to strike from outside the Venezuelan tactical range without the need to preposition bombers in regional bases, exploiting the strategic autonomy of the heavy wing. The E-11 BACN The bridge and options. The campaign against suspicious vessels (with at least seven confirmed attacks on speedboats and a submersible since September) complies a double function: produces immediate kinetic effects and, at the same time, normalizes the use of lethal power without explicit congressional authorization on targets politically designated as “narco-targets.” Trump openly declared that, once the maritime phase has been exhausted, the attacks could move to land against distribution or production facilities, and former USAF officers admit that the B-1 platform is ideal for that scenario. The Republican-dominated Congress has blocked attempts to limit presidential authority, and the line between war on cartels and strategic coercion of the regime has been blurred. deliberately blurred. A B-52 and two F-35Bs seen flying together during the “bomber strike demonstration mission” last week The background. Before reappearing heavy wing on the Caribbean, Washington had consumed three cycles without success: maximum sanctions, political negotiation and recognition of a parallel government. They all failed in dislodging Maduro, protected by a Cuban counterintelligence apparatus and armored by alignment with Russia, China and Iran. The turn to military coercion (destroyers with Tomahawk, embarked special forces, ISR means and precision fire) replicates a repertoire with long and bumpy genealogy in Latin America, but here with a deliberately ambiguous purpose. The Caribbean without law. The Pentagon has sunken vessels alleging narcoterrorism, with no specific congressional authority to equate cartels with al-Qaeda-type threats. Trump came to contemplate blows on the ground that would produce high-impact viral images, but without a sure path to a stable political outcome: the available force (some 10,000 troops) is not enough for a conventional invasion, and a surgical assault to capture Maduro would entail catastrophic risks if it failed. The limits and fragility. I remembered a few hours ago the financial times that the recent history of the United States in “nation-building” after the use of force is poorand in Venezuela the vacuum after a forced decapitation could be occupied by hard factions of the apparatus or consolidate Maduro himself if a failed operation gave him an alibi for deeper repression. The legitimate opposition is fragmented or in exileand institutional continuity after a crash would be uncertain. The main weight of the warning lies not so much in the probability of an immediate attack as in the fact that, by declaring the war open to “narco-terrorists” and pointing to Maduro as one of them, the administration has crossed a line from which it is difficult to retreat without showing strength. The strategy. If you want, the bomber flyover In the face of Venezuela, it functions as an element of psychological pressure, as an enabling infrastructure for a rapid kinetic leap, and as an extra-regional message to those who support the regime. Until now, the legal elasticity of this “anti-drug” framework has served to go through it lining barriers to the use of force without declared war. Now, with the appearance of heavy wingWashington points out that coercion has left the discursive plane to settle in the closest thing to a real architecture of the theater. Image | USA, USAF In Xataka | The US has several warships deployed off Venezuela. Venezuela has a Soviet missile capable of penetrating them In Xataka | Satellite images leave no doubt: there are 10,000 soldiers and unusual artillery pointing at the same place in the Caribbean

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