Month: November 2025

the change was 29,000 euros

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Brandon Halstead, a young kitchen assistant at the British pub and restaurant chain Wetherspoon’s, used his employee discount card on a family meal for seven people. The discount was 20% so was saved about 19.17 pounds in the account (about 22 euros at the exchange rate). Without knowing it, the employee had begun his worst work nightmare. Misuse of the discount card. As and how he collected the british newspaper MirrorBrandon Halstead used his employee discount code on a meal with seven people, including himself, during a day off at one of Wetherspoon’s locations. Unknowingly, I was violating the internal policy that limits the discount to groups of four people or less. A detail that Brandon himself admitted he was unaware of when the company began an internal investigation. Although the employee acknowledged his ignorance of the rule and showed his regret, the company accused him of “dishonesty and abuse” of the discount program, and subjected him to a disciplinary hearing. for serious misconduct. This improper use, although not in bad faith, led to a strict disciplinary sanction from the restaurant chain. Undue access put the finishing touch. During the investigation into the use of the discounts, it was discovered that Brandon’s mother had access to the Wetherspoon’s app to organize work schedules and public transport trips for her son, who has a diagnosis of autism. The company interpreted this access as a violation of its data security policy, which further aggravated the sanctions, to the point of affecting Brandon’s salary, in addition to generating what the DailyMail described as “significant stress and anxiety.” Faced with this situation, Brandon put pressure on the employee, aggravated by his autism condition, the young man requested medical leave for mental health reasons derived from the labor conflict. Given the company’s refusal to meet with them to find a solution that would put an end to that tense environmentBrandon’s mother filed a lawsuit arguing that the company failed to make “reasonable accommodations” to address Brandon’s disability. Justice is clear: there was no bad faith. A local employment tribunal rejected the disability harassment claim, but considered disproportionate the application of a “strict zero tolerance policy” to a person with autism “who was unaware of the rule and did not act in bad faith in applying it.” Labor Judge Murdoch noted that “in Brandon’s case there was no dishonesty test. Brandon immediately admitted to violating the discount policy rules because he was unaware of them. A typical characteristic of autism is a strong desire to comply with the rules. “A person without autism could have known the rules of the discount policy and fraudulently violated them, or could have lied when asked whether he had violated them,” Judge Murdoch stressed. Adaptation of your job. Regarding access to schedule data by the mother, the judge criticizes the company for not having minimally adapted the position to Brandon’s needs. “We consider that the application of this standard procedure places Brandon at a substantial disadvantage compared to a person without autism. Therefore, the court ruled that Wetherspoon’s should compensate Brandon £25,412, equivalent to approximately €28,900, for failing to make the necessary adjustments to avoid the situation of stress and anxiety to your employee. For its part, the company refused to offer comments to the Mirrorclaiming that “The individual remains employed by Wetherspoon and we do not comment on employment matters involving current employees. It should be noted that the employees’ harassment complaint was unsuccessful.” In Xataka | 55,245 euros for eating a sandwich and a beer: Mercadona must compensate an employee for unfair dismissal Image | Unsplash (Cova Software)

what they are and how to access them to know which artists you have listened to the most each week

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Let’s tell you what are Spotify listening statisticsan internal feature that the streaming application has launched for its subscribers. Just as there are external pages and services to be able to see your Spotify statistics With all the songs you’ve been listening to month after month, now the service has released its own. We will start by explaining to you what exactly these statistics are and what data will you be able to see in them. Then, we will explain how you can access them, so you can see yours. What are Spotify listening statistics Spotify listening statistics are a page within the Spotify mobile application, where you will be able to see What artists have you listened to the most? every week. Thus, whenever you want you can see the most popular artists of the moment, those to whom you have spent the most hours. These are quite limited statistics.. At the moment you will only be able to see those for each week, but not the statistics for each month or each year. Additionally, each week you will only be able to see the five artists you have listened to the mostas well as changes in the ranking, but you will not be able to know the total number of listens or minutes of each artist. If you settle for some basic statistics that you will be able to share With views for Instagram stories and other social networks, you will have more than enough. But if you are looking for something more advanced, then you will have to go to services like stats.fm either last.fm. In addition to the artists you’ve listened to the most each week, the listening statistics will also give you some other notable data, such as if you are one of the first to listen to a very popular album that just came out, or when you’ve had a considerable streak of days listening to a specific artist. It will also tell you if in specific weeks you have had a considerable number of hours of listening. How to access statistics What you have to do is make sure you have the Spotify app updated to its latest version. When you do, click on your profile photo to open the options and messages menu, and in it click on the option Listening statistics. Once you do, you will go to the page where a list of all the weeks is shown with the most listened to artists in each one, and some other notable information. Now, you can click on each week to see the full list, or click on the share button to get an image in the form of a story for social networks. In Xataka Basics | Create your own Spotify: 14 audio servers to host your music collection and listen to it wherever you want

features, price and technical sheet

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“We had to make a car under 20,000 euros in less than two years. We went into command mode” With these words Paula Fabregat, Director of Design Projects at Renault for segments A and B, summarizes the madness that has been the launch of the Renault Twingo. It is the last major assignment for Luca de Meo, who was CEO of Renault until last July when he unexpectedly left to make the leap into the luxury market with the Kering group. Since its arrival, the brand has experienced a true revolution, focusing on relaunches of the company’s legendary models reinterpreted as electric cars within the famous plan. Renaulution. The underlying idea in this Twingo looks very similar to the launches we have already seen: urban car like the Renault 5 and the Renault 4created with great care to stay attached to the past and, at the same time, propose an alternative that conquers by design to convince the undecided. The point is that the underlying idea was the same, the way of executing it has been very different. And, despite everything, the result at first glance (before getting into the car) is up to par. Technical data sheet of the Renault Twingo Renault Twingo BODY TYPE. Five-seater B-SUV MEASUREMENTS AND WEIGHT. 3.79 meters long, 1.72 meters wide, 1.49 meters high and 2.43 meters wheelbase. From 1,200 kg weight (no further details are specified) TRUNK. 360 liters MAXIMUM POWER. 60 kW (82 hp) WLTP CONSUMPTION. To be confirmed. ENVIRONMENTAL DISTINCTIVE. Zero emissions DRIVING AIDS (ADAS). The minimum requirements required by the European Union confirmed. Front and rear emergency braking and lane keeping. Up to 24 ADAS driving aids as an option. OTHERS. Open R Link built on Android Automotive, compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Seven-inch screen for the instrument panel and 10-inch screen for the center. ELECTRIC HYBRID. No. Plug-in HYBRID. No. electric Yes. 60 kW (82 HP) versions with 27.5 kWh battery. Only available with 6.3 kW charging as standard Charging of 11 kW in AC and 50 kW in direct current as an option. price and release Price to be confirmed. Start of marketing: early 2026. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? Same spirit in modern times We enter a ship. A pristine Renault Twingo awaits us. With all its nineties aroma. With that jovial spirit and good roller that comes from its colorful upholstery, its simple shapes and its dashboards “with three things counted”. That urban man with the soul of a minivan that seemed to shout to the world that it doesn’t matter what you throw at it, that it is there for you to do with whatever you want. Their seats became beds. Today that Renault Twingo has to play something else. It’s still that purely urban car but it has to be content, no matter what, with being purely urban. Because the Renault Twingo is now an electric car with a 27.8 kWh battery capacity. It is a matter of pure regulations. Europe has decided that we must jump to the electric car. Segment A cars with combustion engines, crowded as they have to be with driving aid systems, They are very complicated to amortize. And they make things more difficult for the rest of the company in terms of their emissions average. Partially electrifying them is not a good idea either, with complex systems that make the product more expensive. Renault decided that if the future was electric it had two paths. The first was to fight for pure price, to make the cheapest car possible. It is ruled out with a Dacia that has the Spring and Chinese brands entering with force. The second way was to target nostalgia, to those who really have money to remember their past times in the Renault 5, 4 and now Twingo. But if they wanted to differentiate themselves, they had to create a product that someone would truly want to buy. And to make it attractive, the French company has given all the love and care possible to these cars… trying to contain the price. This is how the Renault Twingo was born, which in the absence of definitive prices will have an option based on less than 20,000 euros before aid. The proposal is simple: collect that spirit of modularity and practicality to have an urban car with minivan aspirations. The problem, and not a minor one, is that now the Twingo is tied to the city with that battery that approves 260 kilometers according to the WLTP cycle, which will surely go above this figure in the city but that outside of it limits us to routes that will be between 150 and, at most, 200 kilometers. To find the key, Renault has not hesitated to go to the place where cheap, electric cars and those designed in record time triumph. The Renault Twingo is the first major product born from the design and research center that the company has opened in Shanghai. Designed in China, made in Europe. Because the car will be manufactured on Slovenian soil. Specifically in the Novo Mesto plant but with a network of Chinese suppliers around it that guarantee to contain costs. The batteries, in fact, are LFP signed by CATL. Thus, they lack tariffs but claim to be able to bring Chinese knowledge to Europe. And since that context is not the same as that of 1992, when the Twingo was launched on the streets for the first time. To make a car like this attractive, Renault once again puts all the meat on the grill. It has done so by readapting the Renault Captur platform, miniaturizing it and installing the front axle of the Renault 5. This should give the Renault Twingo greater packaging, a greater sensation of a large car. On the outside, the design exercise is extraordinary. Perfect I would say. The play with the headlights, which are lightened by showing sheet metal between the LED arch … Read more

send an army in front of Russia with its most advanced tanks

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Since 1945, Germany has lived cautiously everything related to the use of force beyond its borders. Even when he participated in international missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan or Mali, he always did so in a rotating, temporary format and under strict frameworks, avoiding establishing a permanent presence. The memory of the Second World Warthe initial demilitarization and the subsequent political reconstruction left a doctrine where stable deployment abroad was, more than a red line, a taboo. And then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The German deployment. Germany’s decision to establish its first brigade permanently deployed abroad since 1945 marks a historic turn in its defense policy and European military architecture. The creation of the 45th Armored Brigade in Lithuania, with 4,800 soldiers and civilian support personnel, responds to an increasingly clear reading of the Russian threat and the recognition that the defense of NATO’s eastern flank is, in reality, the defense of Alemani herselfto. The Chancellery in Berlin not only assumes this presence as a symbolic gesture, but as a structural pillar of a new military era, in which Europe must assume greater responsibilities strategic, reduce absolute dependence on the American umbrella and rebuild capabilities what were deliberately dismantled after the end of the Cold War. The brigade is, therefore, both a message to Moscow as an internal message: Germany is abandoning its former military prudence to occupy the role that its economic weight demands, and that its partners (and adversaries) take for granted. Kamikazes, software and more. He German rearmament It is not limited to heavy armor or territorial presence: it extends to the domain of war through saturation and accelerated adaptation, where kamikaze drones have become one of the most decisive tools of contemporary combats. The plan for acquire 12,000 drones suicide bombers, with contracts of around 300 million euros for each manufacturer, reveals a clear doctrinal change: the armed forces should no longer accumulate equipment in static arsenals, but rather maintain them in permanent update cycles, with the bulk of the arsenal under the custody of the industry itself to be modified almost in real time. The war in the background. The reference is direct: in Ukraine, innovation cycles are measured in weeksnot years. Every change in software or payload redefines the tactical value of the dronewhile traditional systems become obsolete due to the frenetic pace of electronic countermeasures. This massive purchase points to a military on the edge facing Russia that understands that the battlefield of the immediate future will be hybrid, digitalized and deeply dependent on agility to adapt to an enemy that learns as quickly as it attacks. Leopard 2A8. The deployment of the 45th Armored Brigade cannot be conceived without it Leopard 2A8the most advanced version of the German battle tank, updated based on the lessons learned from the systematic destruction of armored vehicles in Ukraine. Far from abandoning tanks, Germany has concluded that They are still essential for combined operations, but only if they adapt to an environment where the priority threat is no longer anti-tank missiles guided from hills, but cheap drones capable of descending on vulnerable domes. A tank to anticipate. Hence the integration of Trophy system active protection, early warning sensors, modular armor and electronic packages prepared to counter swarms or loitering munitions. The brigade is thus deployed not as a symbol of the European industrial past, but as a platform that attempts anticipate war to come: coordinated mobility, continuous real-time intelligence support, layered anti-drone defense, and a distributed weapons network that prevents excessive concentration of risk. The presence of the Leopard 2A8 is less a reaffirmation of the tank as an icon and more a doctrinal statement: the ground battle is still valid, but only if it is handled with precision, integration and constant adaptation. Rearm to last. On the whole, these movements They express a conclusion that is already beginning to be accepted unambiguously among European capitals: the peace of the last thirty years was a historical exception, not the norm. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has forced Europe to rebuild military industryreactivate strategic reserves, reinforce borders and recover the idea of an integrated defensesustained and modernized. Germany, which for decades was considered the “weak link” in European defense, is reconfiguring itself as the core potential continental rearmament operation. The 45th Armored Brigade in Lithuania, the 12,000 kamikaze drones and the Leopard 2A8 are not isolated pieces, but pieces of a same transition: preparation for a scenario where deterrence no longer depends solely on political will, but on technological capacity, speed of adaptation and territorial firmness. If you also want, the sign to Moscow is direct: the baltic border It is not a negotiable void, but a very clear line on which the greatest economic power in Europe now stands, permanently. And this time, with armored vehicles, drones, reactivated industry and a strategic mandate that looks decades forward. Image | nara, Boevaya mashina, 7th Army Training Command In Xataka | The most pacifist city in Germany lived off its legendary train factory. Now they will make it from a gigantic tank factory In Xataka | The “rearmament” of Europe has begun at a Volkswagen factory in Germany: instead of cars they will produce tanks

Christmas has revived the specter of redflation and rising prices. And Suchard’s nougat is the bloodiest example

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There is still a month and a half until Christmas begins (unless you live in Vigo), but that has not prevented the shelves of supermarkets in half the country from starting to fill with boxes of Polvorones, panettonesalmonds, marzipan and (of course) nougat tablets. With them, however, something else has arrived: the shadow of the reduflationa phenomenon about which OCU and FACUA they have been for years warning and which basically consists of covering up price increases. You go home believing that you have paid the same (or a little more) than last year when in reality, if you do the math, the kg/€ ratio is much higher. It is not a new practice or exclusive to Christmas, but is already giving something to talk about on account of one of the classics of the national holidays: Suchard’s nougat. What has happened? that the platform Fitstore.es has done an interesting experiment that is generating intense debate. Basically, he has dedicated himself to analyzing the evolution of Suchard chocolate nougat bars between 2020 and 2025, which allowed him to detect two apparently opposing trends: we are paying much more money in exchange for much less product. To be more precise, FITstore ensures that the tablet has gone from costing €2.99 in 2020 to the current €4.99almost 70% more. On some websites, such as Alcampocan be found for less, but that (€4.99) is the sale price in chains like Carrefour, Day either Eroski. The striking thing is that tablets do not weigh the same today as they did five years ago, when they were cheaper. In fact they have decreased. Click on the image to go to the tweet. How have they decreased? According to the FITstore studioIn 2023, Suchard chocolate nougat bars went from weighing 260 grams to 230 g, 11.5% less. If you go to a supermarket (we have done the test in Vigo) that is probably the format you are going to find: 230 g tablets. It is not a phenomenon that only the online sales platform has detected. Last year already warned of this ‘bailing’ the Facua association, which explained that although the price of Suchard nougat had not increased (€3.99) the €/kg ratio had gone from 15.35 to 17.35. That is, (sneakily) the product became 13% more expensive. In some stores the tablet was even more expensive. In DAP They explained last year how Suchard nougat, which in 2023 cost €3.67 in Alcampo, had gone to €3.98. And this despite the fact that the product weighed 30 g less. Is it an isolated case? No. Or it wasn’t, at least a year ago, when Facua published an extensive report in which he cited more cases of reduflation between Christmas sweets. Specifically, it spoke of about a dozen articles that applied “significant price increases” taking advantage of a change in design. For example, Dulce Noel black crunchy nougat went from costing €1.85 in Dia stores in October 2023 to €1.99 a year later. An increase of 7.6% that actually hid an increase in prices of 43.4%. The reason? In addition to becoming 14 cents more expensive, the tablet had been reduced by 50 g, going from 200 to 150 g. More or less similar cases, with increases per kilo of up to 52%, could be found in other items from Nestlé, Lindt or the Dia white label. What is the reason for the increase? The million dollar question. The rise in prices of chocolates and nougat can be explained in part by manufacturing costs: in the last year they have become more expensive the energyrents and ingredients such as rice, flour and the eggs. However, if there is a product that has seen its price skyrocket with a key impact on the candy industry, it is chocolate, mired in an international crisis which has directly influenced its price. The CPI gives a good account of this. According to the last data published by the INE (corresponding to September), chocolate has skyrocketed by almost 16% during the last year. Cocoa has increased by 8.5%. These are high percentages, but they also show a relaxation compared to those recorded just a few months ago, when the year-on-year increase in chocolate exceeded 20%. The question remains to what extent cocoa fluctuations are now influencing nougat. What do they say from the sector? At Xataka we have contacted Mondelez International to ask them about the changes in Suchard nougats and, more specifically, about their apparent reduflation. The multinational does not go into details, but remembers that it operates “in an increasingly complex and unstable environment” that forces it to make “adjustments” so as not to “compromise the taste and quality” of the product. “As food manufacturers, we continue to face high costs throughout our supply chain, especially in key ingredients such as cocoa. This makes manufacturing our products significantly more expensive than in the past,” explains the company, which claims to do “everything possible to assume the extra costs.” “However, in such a complex environment, we sometimes have to make carefully considered adjustments to our Suchard range.” The goal, they say, is “to continue offering consumers the chocolate nougat they love, without compromising the great flavor or quality they expect.” “For this reason, and despite the context, we have not altered our recipe, again in order to protect the quality and taste of this iconic Christmas product.” Images | Vitaly Gariev (Unsplash) and Xataka In Xataka | I have made homemade nougat and it is delicious. The problem is the price

none exceeds 350 euros and they have a 24-month warranty

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When it comes to buying a new device, we don’t always look for the best or the latest. Many times the determining factor is the price, one that is especially relevant in periods like this where we are so close to the Black Friday. Now, if we seek to save as much as possible on our purchases, there is something that we cannot lose sight of: refurbished devices. and there Back Market It has a huge selection. Among its entire catalog, we can find devices from brands like Apple at great prices. They are a very interesting option if we want to try a reconditioned one for the first time and we are not looking to spend too much, all taking into account that vWe also have a 24-month warranty. Of all the available options, we leave you three as an example: Apple Watch Series 9 by 295 eurosa device that still holds its own and offers a great experience. Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 by 114 eurosa very economical tablet ideal for studying or working. Apple iPad Air 5 by 301 eurosanother tablet option that offers a lot for its price. Apple Watch Series 9 The thing about Apple is that it is difficult to find its cheaper devices, even if they have been available for a year. The reconditioned ones fit in very well there., both on iPhones as in tablets and watches. If you are looking for one of the latter, you have the one available right now. Watch Series 9 by 295 euros in Back Market, a great price if we take into account that this device arrived in stores around 480 euros. This is a very interesting model that stands out for offering an LTPO OLED display with up to 2,000 nits of maximum brightnessideal for outdoors. It is powerful and its performance is very good, being also an ideal option to be able to control our health and our training on a daily basis. Its autonomy also reaches up to 36 hours in low consumption mode. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 If we are looking for a refurbished device to try and we want to spend little in return, this Galaxy Tab A8 It can fit us perfectly. It is true that it already has a few years behind it, but despite this it is still a very good option if we want something cheap to watch multimedia content or to study. We have it available for 114 eurosall without forgetting its 24-month warranty. What does this Galaxy Tab A8 offer? It is a device that has a 10.5-inch screen with WUXGA resolution (1,920 x 1,200 pixels), an average size to be able to watch a movie or as a work (or study) tool. Its battery, in addition, is 7,040 mAh, uMore than enough size for a whole day. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Apple iPad Air 5 We close this selection of reconditioned devices with another from Apple, this time with a iPad Air 5. It is a device that combines great performance with a design that, in hand, it is super convenient to use. It arrived in stores for over 650 euros, but if we buy it reconditioned in Back Market, its price has little to do with it: it costs 301 euros. Of this, we can highlight its 10.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2,360 x 1,640 pixels, ideal for watching movies and playing games. At the power level it is plenty thanks to its M1 chipwhich is accompanied by 8 GB of RAM. As we have said above, it is a very easy to use device that we can take with us everywhere. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Xataka, Apple, Samsung In Xataka | Best tablets in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and recommended models In Xataka | The best smartwatches: their analyzes and videos are here

NVIDIA and OpenAI know that the AI ​​bubble can burst in their faces. His solution: let dad pay for the state

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Too big to fail or, in English, “too big to fail.” It is a theory of economics and finance which argues that certain corporations, especially banks, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and therefore must be rescued by governments. The speech gained traction in the 2008 financial crisis and is beginning to sound again from the mouths of NVIDIA and OpenAI, no less. Government support. At an event of WSJSarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, stated that the company will not go public in the short term (she says until at least 2027) and that its priority is growth and investment in R&D, above profitability. The most striking part of his speech was when he said that they hope that the government will support the financing of future agreements related to data centers. That OpenAI is burning astronomical amounts of money to lead the AI ​​race is something we have been discussing for a long timebut it is the first time that they directly appeal to the state to guarantee it. Shortly after, Friar collected cable in a post on LinkedIn: “OpenAI does not seek government support for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word ‘support’ and that confused the message,” but the seed was already planted. Depreciation. OpenAI is closing deals to secure computing capacity. We have seen it with his alliance with NVIDIAwith amdwith Broadcom and more recently with amazon. The complexity of the situation is that the depreciation rates of AI chips remain uncertain. As it says Washington Post’s Gerrit de Vynck in XOpenAI is going to need the best chips to be at the forefront of the AI ​​market, but financing this demand is not the same if the life cycle of the chips is seven years, as if it is only two years. The money is flowing, the question is for how long. In this uncertain scenario, government support would act as a safety net so that banks and private equity firms would feel more comfortable and continue releasing billions for OpenAI. China will win. NVIDIA is also appealing for government involvement in subtle ways. In a Financial Times event in London, Its CEO Jenshen Huang has warned that “China is going to win the AI ​​race.” Their arguments are that China has more flexible regulation and government subsidies for the energy your data centers needthat It is not little. This energy advantage allows China to compete even if they cannot buy NVIDIA’s most powerful chips. Huang doesn’t say it directly, but it is a clear wake-up call: either you subsidize the energy our data centers need or China will win. The fear. The question has been hanging over the air for a long time: Are we witnessing a new bubble? The investor Michael Burry thinks soand he is not just any investor, he was the one who made gold when the real estate bubble burst in 2008 (the movie ‘The Big Short’ is based on his story). The thing is, Burry just bet short against NVIDIA, which recently It was valued at 5 billion dollars. Fear of the bubble continues to grow, according to a Coatue report and the number of fund managers who believe we are in a bubble increased to 54% in October, up from 37% in July this year. 48% of the S&P 500 index corresponds to AI-related stocks. Fountain: Bianco Research Numbers. The fear is not at all unfounded and all you have to do is take a look at the numbers. Account Tomás Pueyo in Uncharted Territories that the economy should be in recession, but the numbers show the opposite and AI is behind this growth. The S&P 500 index is through the roof and 48% of this growth corresponds to AI-related stocks. The share price is far above what it was in the dotcom bustall with ridiculous benefits. And that’s not all, the economic growth of the United States in 2025 is due almost entirely to the construction of data centers for AI. According to the Economist Jason Furmanwithout taking data centers into account, the GDP of the United States would have grown only 0.1% in 2025. The creator of the newsletter Today in Tabs He gave a very graphic example: “Our economy could be reduced to three AI data centers in trench coats.” Tightrope. Returning to OpenAI, its financial director assured the Financial Times that it could be profitable simply by stopping investing too aggressively since it has a “very healthy” margin structure. The thing is, they can’t do it. OpenAI needs to achieve AGI, its great promise and the only thing that could justify this insane investment. If it fails, will cause a shock wave that can impact NVIDIA, AMD, Oracle… and end up dragging down the global economy. The competition tightens, Anthropic is eating the business market’s toast and Google is not only winning every time more users with Geminireached record revenue in the last quarterwhile OpenAI lost $11.5 billion in the same period. It doesn’t look good. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | NVIDIA will invest 100 billion in OpenAI so that OpenAI buys chips from NVIDIA. And it’s a disturbing sign

Portal is now a laptop to play PS5 in the cloud

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When Sony announced PlayStation Portal in May 2023, skepticism was general. A device costing more than 200 euros that only allowed a PS5 to play remotely seemed like a limited proposal in a market where Steam Deck and switch (plus the increasingly populated panorama of Laptop PCs and the chinese devices) They already offered complete experiences. However, Sony seems to have realized that it has a device with potential in its hands and has taken a step in an unforeseen direction. The limitations so far. Portal is an additional screen that allows you to view the content and games of your mobile device on a mobile device. PlayStation 5. It has no autonomy outside the console, and its range of action is the one that has the Wi-Fi to which you are connected (or a second Wi-Fi: there is the possibility of connecting the home console to one Wi-Fi and the Portal to another). A considerable limitation that hindered the possibilities of a technically very interesting device (especially in the imitation of the DualSense and the quality of the screen). Surprise success. But the device sold out in the United States and the United Kingdom within two days of its launch in November 2023, and Sony admitted that sales of the device They exceeded their internal projections. It is estimated to have sold between 420,000 and 630,000 units in the United States from its launch through July 2024, and data from early 2024 indicated that approximately 3% of the 65.5 million PS5 owners owned a Portal, which translates to almost 2 million units sold globally. The true strategic turn. It arrives now, in November 2025, two years after launch. Sony has introduced an update that updates the cloud gaming that has been available for a year in beta mode. From now on, you can run your own digital games on PlayStation Portal, along with titles from the PS Plus catalog that could already be previously streamed. Thousands of compatible PS5 titles from users’ personal libraries are now supported, including titles as diverse as ‘Astro Bot’, ‘GTA 5’, ‘Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’, ‘Fortnite’ and ‘Resident Evil 4’. The update has also added features that were not yet available in the beta: support for 3D audio, password lock, in-game purchases and new accessibility options, as well as a redesigned interface with three tabs: “Remote Play”, “Cloud Streaming” and “Search”. Testing ground. PlayStation Portal has functioned in the last year as a perfect testing ground for Sony. With a relatively modest investment, in a device that was essentially a DualSense with a screen, Sony has studied the behavior of users with cloud gaming without launching into something as expensive as developing a laptop. Usage data, for example, reveals that the device wakes up a lot at night, around nine o’clock, suggesting that users first play the console and then switch to the Portal when other family members use the TV. It is not an obstacle. Playstation Portal does not compete with portable consoles such as Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. Rather, it complements the PS5, and does not cannibalize sales of the console (undoubtedly, an issue that should currently concern Microsoft, which with launches like the ROG Ally Xbox you can prepare to sell even less hardware). In fact, Playstation Portal requires users to have already entered the PlayStation ecosystem, especially now that unrestricted cloud gaming (beyond purchased digital games) is limited to subscribers of PS Plus Premium, the most expensive tier of the service. Overtaking Xbox on the right. Microsoft has bet very heavily on cloud gaming as an integral part of the Game Pass Ultimate experience. Sony had been lagging behind until now, but with this it has its own hardware (not like the ROG Ally “licensed” by Microsoft) to give an extraordinary push to its own cloud game. No one else among the majors has something like this: a console for an official PS5 streaming experience… with the controls cloned to a DualSense. Will we see a laptop? It is the big question that remains to be answered. These sales figures, as surprising as they are for Sony, are still insufficient to justify the cost of a complete laptop with its own ecosystem. The ghost of PS Vita failure It must still weigh too much in Sony’s offices, but the success of Portal opens the door to a future hybrid console: one that runs games natively (although these do not exist in physical format, but does not depend on an internet connection) and that also does so with titles in the cloud. Are we facing the future of consoles or just a smart move on the part of Playstation? In Xataka | At E3 1995, PlayStation only needed two seconds to destroy SEGA. And it changed video games forever

The industry became obsessed with training AI models, while Google prepared its masterstroke: inference chips

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In recent years, what was truly relevant was training AI models to make them better. Now that they have matured and training it no longer scales as noticeablywhat matters most is inference: that when we use AI chatbots they work quickly and efficiently. Google realized this change in focus, and has chips precisely prepared for it. Ironwood. This is the name of the new chips from Google’s famous family of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). The company, which began developing them in 2015 and launched the first ones in 2018now obtains especially interesting fruits from all that effort: some really promising chips not for training AI models, but for us to use them faster and more efficiently than ever. Inference, inference, inference. These “TPUv7” will be available in the coming weeks and can be used to train AI models, but they are especially aimed at “serving” these models to users so that they can use them. It is the other big leg of AI chips, the really visible one: one thing is to train the models and quite another to “execute” them so that they respond to user requests. Efficiency and power by flag. The advance in the performance of these AI chips is enormous, at least according to Google. The company claims that Ironwood offers four times the performance of the previous generation in both training and inference, and is “the most powerful and energy-efficient custom silicon to date.” Google has already reached an agreement with Anthropic so that the latter has access up to one million TPUs to run Claude and serve it to its users. Google’s AI supercomputersand. These chips are the key components of the so-called AI Hypercomputer, an integrated supercomputing system that according to Google allows customers to reduce IT costs by 28% and a ROI of 353% in three years. Or what is the same: they promise that if you use these chips, the return on investment will be multiplied by more than four in that period. Almost 10,000 interconnected chips. The new Ironwoods are also equipped with the ability to be part of joining forces in a big way. It is possible to combine up to 9,216 of them in a single node or pod, which theoretically makes the bottlenecks of the most demanding models disappear. The size of this type of cluster is enormous, and allows for up to 1.77 Petabytes of shared HBM memory while these chips communicate with a bandwidth of 9.6 Tbps thanks to the so-called Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI). More FLOPS than anyone. The company also claims that an “Ironwood pod” (a cluster with those 9,216 Ironwood TPUs) offers 118x more ExaFLOPS FP8 than its best competitor. FLOPS measure how many floating-point math operations these chips can solve per second, ensuring that basically any AI workload is going to run in record times. NVIDIA has more and more competition (and that’s a good thing). Google chips are a demonstration of the clear vocation of companies to avoid too many dependencies on third parties. Google has all the ingredients to do it, and its TPUv7 is proof of this. It’s not the only oneand many other AI companies have long sought to create their own chips. NVIDIA’s dominance remains clearbut the company has a small problem. In inference CUDA is no longer so vital. Once the AI ​​model has been trained, inference operates under different game rules than training. CUDA support remains a relevant factorbut its importance in inference is much less. Inference focuses on obtaining the fastest possible answer. Here the models are “compiled” and can run optimally on the target hardware. This may cause NVIDIA to lose relevance to alternatives like Google. In Xataka | When you’re OpenAI and you can’t buy enough GPUs, the solution is obvious: make your own

There is a corner of Spain that God has taken a liking to: Alicante, Murcia and Almería

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“In Murcia there has to be a tarp or something, it’s not normal.” It José Montiel said while looking at a map with the rain that is going to fall in Spain in the coming days and the truth is that it is difficult to disagree. In the last few hours, we have had the combination of a trough and a river of humidity that have produced a squall line over the peninsula, leaving in its wake intense winds, considerable rains and many storms. Everywhere, less in the southeast. What happens in Alicante, Murcia and Almería? Strictly speaking, nothing new happens. The southeastern corner of the peninsula has been recording national minimums throughout the modern period. It is enough to look at the stations around Cabo de Gata to discover that the annual accumulations are very low (around 200mm/year) and if we go a little further inland, to Tabernas for example, the figures are only about 50mm higher. Although with enormous irregularity, yes. It is not surprising, therefore, that desertification is devouring that corner of Spain. Nor does the Köppen-Geiger classification indicate that these are the most arid climates in the country (rivaling only some areas of the Canary Islands). But why? There are three fundamental reasons that explain why the southeast of the country receives so little water. The Azores anticyclone: The great Atlantic plug affects a large part of the country, it is true. We must not forget that, according to the latest studies, Spain faces the driest climate in its last 1,200 years and the progressive strengthening of that anticyclone is to blame. However, due to the trajectory of the winds in the northern hemisphere, not all parts of the territory are affected equally. You just have to compare the climate regime of Galicia with that of Murcia. The Betic mountain ranges: Although we sometimes tend to forget it, in the south of Spain there are a series of really high mountain ranges. The highest mountain on the peninsula, in fact, is in the Baetic mountain ranges. These constitute a true orographic wall that intercepts humidity and generates a very long rainfall shadow over the southeastern coast. Come on, the water stays west of the mountains. Evapotranspiration totally uncontrolled: We are talking about an area with very high insolation and very high evapotranspiration. It’s not just that it rains little, it evaporates a lot and that generates a “deserted” terrain that is unable to take advantage of the rains when they arrive. And that, in an area where DANAs are key, is a problem. Everything is getting worse. We might think that all this is normal and yet it is not. We are inserted in a time of changes and IPCC forecasts are gloomy: to the Mediterranean as it is one of the places in the world where the reduction in precipitation is most directly linked to warming. It is estimated a drop of 4% for each degree more in the central and northern Mediterranean. The best example is this same 2025. Despite the historic rains that have occurred this yearthe balance of the southeast will be bad. And, while illegal water trafficking schemes continue to grow, There are initiatives to continue building transfers that they bring to the region the liquid that does not fall from the sky. The problem is that, whether we want to see it or not, we need more far-reaching changes than what we currently seem to be able to assume. Image | ECMWF In Xataka | Long periods of drought are going to become more and more normal. It’s time to get used to them

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