Month: March 2026

Apple completely changes the architecture of its chips with a textbook “divide and conquer”

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The week started with a flurry of news from Apple, something we already expected after Tim Cook’s words stating that it was going to be a “great week.” And in addition to the new iPhone 17e and iPad Airtoday it was the MacBook’s turn. In this article we wanted to focus on explaining what is special about the new M5 Pro and M5 Max processors, chips that land at the latest MacBook Pro. The company follows the same pattern as always. First comes the base chip, the M5, which we already saw in the 14-inch MacBook Prohe iPad Pro and Apple Vision Proalong with the new MacBook Air, and then, they take advantage of their most capable equipment to welcome the most powerful variants. But this year there is something different, and that is that the company uses a new manufacturing architecture internal that Apple had not used until now in its Mac chips. We will tell you all the details. Apple’s M4 Pro and M4 Max SoCs, in numbers m5 pro m5 max M5 m4 photolithography 3nm (3rd gen) 3nm (2nd generation) 3nm (2nd generation) 3nm architecture Fusion Fusion A single die A single die CPU cores Up to 18 18 Up to 10 Up to 10 Supercores 6 6 4 4 performance cores 12 12 6 6 GPU cores Up to 20 Up to 40 Up to 10 Up to 10 neural engine 16 16 16 16 maximum unified memory 64 128 32 32 bandwidth 307GB/s 614 GB/s 153GB/s 120GB/s ray tracing Yes (3rd gen.) Yes (3rd gen.) Yes (3rd gen.) Yeah neural accelerator on GPU Yes (per core) Yes (per core) Yes (per core) No connectivity Thunderbolt 5 Thunderbolt 5 Thunderbolt 4 Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 codecs H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 memory integrity enforcement Yeah Yeah No No The big news: the Fusion architecture Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of these new chips is the call ‘Fusion’ architecture. Apple has designed this SoC (system on a chip) by combining two other chips manufactured in TSMC’s third-generation 3-nanometer node. The signature promise that the chips communicate with each other through very high bandwidth and minimal latency. Why this approach? As chips grow in number of cores and memory needs, Putting everything on a single piece of silicon becomes increasingly complicated and expensive. The solution of dividing it into two interconnected chips allows its capabilities to be scaled without sacrificing efficiency. Each of these chips integrates CPU, GPU, neural engine, unified memory controller, Media Engine (which are the cores dedicated to processing multimedia codecs) and controllers. Thunderbolt 5. It is, in essence, the basis that makes it possible for the M5 Max to reach figures that we previously only saw in desktop chips. A new CPU from top to bottom Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max share the same CPU design: 18 cores organized into two very different types. On the one hand there are the so-called super cores: six high-performance cores which Apple also incorporated into the standard M5. The company assures which are “the world’s fastest CPU cores in single-thread performance”thanks to the fact that they handle greater bandwidth, and have a new cache hierarchy and better branch prediction. On the other hand, the chip incorporates 12 performance cores completely new, different from the efficiency cores we have seen in previous generations. They are optimized specifically for multi-threaded workloads that require sustained power without skyrocketing consumption. The combination of both groups of cores allows, according to Apple, a jump of up to 30% in performance for professional tasks regarding M4 Pro and M4 Maxand up to 2.5 times more multi-threaded performance compared to M1 Pro and M1 Max. It will be interesting to see this performance improvement in action when we test the devices in depth. What the M5 Pro promises Your GPU scales up to 20 cores next generation, each with an integrated neural accelerator. Memory bandwidth goes up to 307GB/sand the chip can manage up to 64 GB of unified memory. Apple promises up to 20% more graphics performance compared to the M4 Pro, and up to 35% improvement in applications that use ray tracing, thanks to its dedicated third-generation engine included in the chip. The shading engine is also updated, incorporating second-generation dynamic caching technology and hardware-accelerated mesh shading. What this technology basically does is simplify complex geometries into more manageable meshes for when it’s time to render. In terms of AI, Apple claims that the M5 Pro offers more than four times the GPU performance for artificial intelligence compared to the M4 Pro, and more than six times compared to the M1 Pro. M5 Max: the ceiling of Apple laptops The M5 Max shares the same 18-core CPU as the M5 Pro, but doubles the graphics and memory resources. Your GPU reaches 40 coresthe unified memory bandwidth reaches 614 GB/s (twice as much as the M5 Pro) and can hold up to 128 GB of unified memory. In graphic performance, Apple assures an improvement of up to 20% compared to the M4 Maxand up to 30% in ray tracing applications. For AI tasks, the chip promises more than four times the peak GPU performance compared to its direct predecessor and more than six times compared to the M1 Max. With these astronomical figures, Apple puts on the table a tremendously capable chip for all types of professionals, from 3D artists to app developers, AI, etc. And in the end, having such an amount of bandwidth on a laptop makes tasks with large volumes of data much easier to digest. We will see in practice how they perform. The rest of the package: Neural Engine, Thunderbolt 5 and security Beyond the CPU and GPU, both chips incorporate a 16-core Neural Engine renewed, which promises a higher bandwidth connection to memory, ideal for functions of Apple Intelligence and other local AI applications. In connectivity, the M5 Pro and … Read more

It took eight months for the French Academy to bring Jim Carrey to Paris. It took the Internet eight hours to decide that it wasn’t him

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On February 26, Jim Carrey received a prestigious Honorary César for his entire career in Paris, after years of semi-retirement. But what was born as a touching emotional tribute at the center of a conspiracy theory: was it really him who took the stage, or an impersonator with prosthetics? The story of how an Instagram post unleashed chaos (and how it ended up being denied). A tribute. Jim Carrey has received this year’s Honorary César: the French Oscars rewarded his “exceptional versatility” with an award that Julia Roberts, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher had already received. It also arrived at a time when Carrey’s career was at a peculiar point: in 2022, at the press conference for ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ he announced that he retired. But he came back three years later. with brutal honesty: “I have bought many things and I need the money“Frankly.” Therefore, Carrey arrived in Paris after a false retirement that had made him partially disappear, yes, from the red carpets and premieres. And now he was on the most elegant stage in European cinema. He had not disappeared from the public light, however: in November, had been seen at Soundgarden’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. But his appearances have always been, in recent years, spaced out in time and without warning. The delivery. The first unexpected moment of the night came when Carrey, after being introduced by Michel Gondry, and with an aesthetic that left behind the lush beard of recent years, gave the acceptance speech completely in French. The accent was unmistakably American, but it was very worked. As Gregory Caulier, general delegate of the Caesars, would later reveal, I had prepared it for months. In it revealed a connection with France that no one knew: his ancestor Marc-François Carré (the family’s original surname before Anglicization) was born in Saint-Malo and, from there, emigrated to Canada The change. In fact, already at the aforementioned Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony its appearance It had aroused some surprise: it already had the aesthetic that it repeated at the Césars, with shoulder-length hair and slightly different facial features than usual. The first speculations pointed to the cosmetic surgery as a possible reason and some experts on the subject speculated about what those interventions could have been. Dr. Millicent Rovelo speak of an upper blepharoplasty (to remove excess skin from the upper eyelids) and a significant volume of Botox on the forehead. Another surgeon, Dr. John Diaz pointed out to a possible cervical tightening procedure. The very media Dr. Tony Youn pointed out signs of an endoscopic brow lift that would explain the slight displacement of the hairline. and joined the hypothesis of blepharoplasty and Botox. Finally, Dr. Raffi Hovsepian, dissented: The changes in the forehead and eye area seemed compatible with natural male aging, without surgical evidence. Let’s not forget that in 2003, Carrey appeared at the Teen Choice Awards completely blindfolded, wearing sunglasses, pretending to come out of surgery. By then rumors arose about the tweaks to his physique. The mask artist. Four days after the ceremony, Alexis Stone posted a carousel of three images on Instagram. The first two featured Jim Carrey. The third was a latex mask, false teeth, a dark wig, and various makeup materials arranged on a table with the Eiffel Tower out of focus in the background. The caption was simply “Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey in Paris.” Stone is a self-taught effects designer who has built a career on hyperrealistic transformations that have allowed her to pass herself off as Madonna, Jack NicholsonLana Del Rey, Robin Williams’ Ms. Doubtfire or Glenn Close’s Cruella de Vil. Stone usually documents his process in detail, but this was not the case: we only saw a mask that even had details that some users saw themselves as belonging to an AI generationwith excessively perfect contours and a blurry background typical of synthetic images. but when famous like Megan Fox or Katy Perry spread Stone’s posts, the rumor germinated all over the internet: the Césars were not Jim Carrey, but an imposter. Because. The arguments that the conspiracy theorists maintained They appeared almost at the same time as the gala. For example, the color of the eyes, usually dark brown, here a more greenish tone. More: Carrey is left-handed, and several short videos showed him in Paris using his right hand to sign autographs. The third argument was the speech itself: that someone who was theoretically retired and had no active ties to France spoke for ten minutes in French with very elaborate pronunciation, it was, for a part of the public, tremendously suspicious. The interviews that prove it. Of course, this is the moment that conspiracy theorists have been waiting for to bring up interviews from Carrey’s past with ambiguous, philosophical or downright incomprehensible answers. In 2017 declared that he did not believe in personalities, that the fashion party he had gone to and at which he was being interviewed seemed to him “absolutely meaningless” (from a metaphysical point of view) and that “there is no self, there are only things happening” (later the actor himself I would rate the interview “existential experiment”). In a previous interview, he calmly said “I’m dead“, but it was in the context of a conversation about spirituality and ego. We recommend fans of the most disconcerting Carrey to check out the incredible documentary ‘Jim and Andy’, which documents his literal transformation into Andy Kaufman for the filming of ‘Man on the Moon’. Official confirmation. The first official statements came from Marleah Leslie, Jim Carrey’s publicist for decades, with a brief message and that left no room for doubt: “Jim Carrey attended the César Awards, where he accepted his Honorary César Award.” That same day, the aforementioned Gregory Caulier told Variety what the eight months of preparatory conversations had been like and the months that the actor dedicated to working on his French. Carrey went to Paris accompanied by … Read more

has done it with promising pocket AI models

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The latest models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google are fantastic, no doubt, but they have a problem: they are gigantic, so the only way to use them is to use the chatbots of these companies. But while those companies focus on that approach, Alibaba just surprised us with something fascinating. The allure of tiny AI models. This Chinese technology giant just launched the family of “Qwen 3.5 Small Models”, which is made up of four variants of open models with really small sizes. Thus, we have a “dwarf” model with 800 million parameters (0.8B), another with 2,000 million (2B), a third with 4,000 million (4B) and the last one with 9,000 million (9B). There are no official figures for the number of parameters for GPT 5.3, Opus 4.6 or Gemini 3.1, but it is very likely that they are all around 500B or far higher. Tiny but bully. The first two models are designed for prototyping and deployment in very modest devices and in which battery life is a priority, because their consumption is also very tight. Meanwhile, Qwen3.5-4B is a multimodal model for lightweight AI agents that supports a context window of up to 262,144 tokens. The latter, for example, has a size of less than 3 GB in its 4-bit quantized version, which makes it usable even on mobile phones. Even more interesting is the “eldest” of the family. The best essences… The latest of these models, Qwen3.5-9B, is really promising. It is a reasoning model that according to its creators surpasses nothing less than gpt-oss-120B, the open OpenAI model that is 13.5 times larger and that until now was a great reference in this field. All of these models are open weights, and can be found in both Hugging Face as in ModelScope in its different variants. A new approach. In these models Alibaba has made some changes and makes use of what they call Efficient Hybrid Architecture in which they combine a new type of attention algorithms (Gated Delta Networks) with the already known Mixture-of-Experts (MoE). This approach allows you to avoid the “memory wall” problem that affects small models. Promising returns. The results of the benchmarks published by Alibaba are really striking. Both Qwen3.5-4B and Qwen3.5-9B make a notable leap in efficiency, especially in multimodal tests—these models are capable of using images as input—and reasoning tasks. Thus, in the MMMU-Pro visual reasoning test, Qwen3.5-9B left Gemini 2.5 Flash lite behind, and in the GPQA reasoning test the Alibaba model 9B even managed to leave gpt-oss-120b behind. Alibaba surpasses itself. Paul Couvert, popularizer of AI, showed his enthusiasm in Xwhere he explained that at least according to these benchmarks Qwen3.5-4B was as powerful as Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking, which until not long ago was considered a marvel but which had a notable size. Models for your laptop and your mobile. These models are especially striking because they give the option for practically anyone to use them on their laptop or mobile phone (or integrated into a browser!). In all cases the advantages are clear: you do not depend on the cloud, so you can use them offline, and our conversations do not go through any server, so “everything stays at home” and when using these models, the chats are private. Only Google seems to follow suit. Of the Western AI majors, only Google seems to be interested in small models. Gemma 3 270M was a surprising version launched in August 2025. Microsoft also has its Phi-4 December 2024, but beyond that there are few examples. OpenAI launched gpt-oss-20B and gpt-oss-120B in August 2025 and showed some interest in this type of scenario, but there has been no news since then. There are startups like Liquid that have a eye-catching LFM2.5 with a variant of only 1.2B, but here Alibaba seems unstoppable with its commitment to small. At least, for now. In Xataka | If the question is which of the big tech companies is winning the AI ​​race, the answer is: none

Delays and cancellations are putting a hole in Renfe’s accounts. So he’s going to start his own bus company.

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Renfe Viajeros… by bus. That has been one of the usual trends in recent months, with the company plagued by incidents that have prevented it from providing the service normally. The situation has been so complicated that, it is estimated, the impact of alternative services exceeds 10 million euros each year. The solution: create your own bus network. And Renfe is already looking for a partner. Looking for a partner. The information is brought The Countrywhere it is stated that Renfe is looking for a partner to start its own bus company. The idea would be very simple: Renfe would control 49% of the company and 51% would fall on the side of the collaborator. According to the newspaper, the proposal has already passed the board of directors of Renfe and Renfe Viajeros. Now, therefore, it remains to carry out the tender so that those companies that are interested in offering support to Renfe can sign up. The initial idea would be to have dozens of buses (between 50 and 100, according to the newspaper) to provide service in specific contexts. In Xataka We have contacted Renfe but when we wrote these lines we have not received a response. Because? Because Renfe is spending money on offering an alternative on wheels to its customers. When an incident interrupts the service, Renfe has to have a alternative road transport system. Right now, he has to pay an outside company, renting the buses and related expenses, such as staff. Having its own fleet would entail an expense of around 60 million euros, according to the initial accounts that have been raised. However, the newspaper points out that there are savings of between 90 and 130 million after a decade. That is, each year on average you would be saving about 10 million euros or a slightly higher figure. From the media they collect that the model used will be that of “negotiated procedure with advertising”. This means that Renfe will receive proposals but will be able to negotiate the conditions with the companies that have a more solvent offer. It is an exceptional procedure in the public procurement system. Exceptional situation. The premise, therefore, is to have a fixed fleet of buses and drivers, without having to subcontract and pay others to perform exceptional road services. Until now, the company has to search the market for drivers and buses that are available when a line is cut due to an unforeseen event. In recent years, the problem has been especially serious for the company. The DANA of Valenciathe fires in Galicia and León and the recent cutting of the southern corridor as consequence of the Adamuz accident in Córdoba has forced Renfe to maintain active service with buses for weeks. What does Renfe expect? Attract companies that have been seeing their business contract. And since The Country They point out that Renfe believes that there is more than enough business to keep the contracted buses active for at least 10 years. In fact, the contract would be for a decade, extendable to another five years, and they say that demand peaks could multiply current ones by nine. The movement could be interesting for bus companies because, right now, There are route tenders that are half dead and in which work is done with very low demand. Some of these companies would find a new outlet for their vehicles with each Renfe breakdown or incident in the infrastructure. In addition, it must be taken into account that the impact on the accounts may be greater when the incident (such as those described above) is not scheduled because forces Renfe to enter a market with few drivers and with companies that know the urgency of the company. Forced. It must be taken into account that a good part of Renfe’s business continues to be public. Therefore, you have the obligation to provide an alternative service when incidents occur on high speed but also if, for example, there are incidents on Cercanías or Rodalies. Any improvement in facilities that requires the interruption of rail traffic is replaced with buses. Photo | Pablo Nieto Abad and Fabio Romano In Xataka | Spain thought that Spain could manufacture the perfect trains for Spain. The reality: Spain is already looking for trains in Germany

The US is launching a missile capable of burying the Tomahawk on Iran. And the big question is where are you doing it from?

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The image of an American precision strike has been linked to silhouettes taking off from the sea or from the air. However, in recent years the Army has invested billions in recovering a capability that seemed secondary: hitting very, very far… from the mainland. In that bet may lie one of the greatest transformations of modern military power. A debut that changes theater. USA has premiered in combat the so-called Precision Strike Missileits new tactical ballistic missile, within the operation against Iran. It is not a minor evolution of the former ATACMSit is rather a leap in scope and concept. With more than 500 kilometers radius (and room to grow towards 650 and even 1,000) practically doubles the depth of ground fire available until now. As in many other “premieres”, it is not symbolic, it is doctrinal. A missile to bury the Tomahawk. The PrSM flies at speeds greater than Mach 3 in the terminal phase, allowing it to arrive earlier and better penetrate hardened targets. Forehead to Tomahawkslower and subsonic, the new system greatly reduces the enemy’s reaction time and complicates interception. Additionally, two missiles fit in a single HIMARS launcher pod, meaning that double the punch per vehicle. Of course, it does not replace the Tomahawk in strategic range, but in regional scenarios it can be left in the background due to speed, survivability and response capacity against time-sensitive targets. A PrSM capsule seen in front of a US Army M142 during an exercise in Australia. The M142 carries a 227 mm rocket with six projectiles. The Persian Gulf as a platform. At this point, geography explains a good part of the movement. The Gulf has a medium width of just 250 kilometerswith American allies aligned on the western bank and Iran occupying the eastern one. With a range of 500 kilometers, a land battery located anywhere on the Arab side can cover wide swathes from Iranian territory without the need to penetrate its airspace. That makes the missile a perfect tool to support an air campaign without exposing fighters or depending exclusively on ships. A test launch of a PrSM The key question: from where? The most decisive fact remains unknown. No has been confirmed Which Gulf country has authorized the use of its soil to launch these missiles. This mystery is not technical, it is rather political. The reason? Allowing a US land battery to fire on Iran automatically makes that territory in possible objective of retaliation. Many States in the region have historically preferred discreetly support to Washington while avoiding public exposure. Put another way, the exact location of the launch determines what capital takes on the direct risk. Hunting sensitive targets. Short-range ballistic missiles are especially effective against radars, mobile launchers and air defense nodes. Plus: they can be maintained on permanent alert and strike within minutes when a target arises. In a conflict where neutralizing anti-aircraft systems is key to sustaining air superiority, the PrSM provides a ground suppression capability which until now relied heavily on aviation and naval missiles. Beyond Iran. If you also want the premiere of the PrSM send a signal to other scenarios, especially the Pacific. Its planned evolution includes anti-ship versions capable of attacking moving targets and variants with greater range that will touch the threshold of medium-range missiles. It we have counted before. The US Army wants regain prominence in long-range warfare, traditionally dominated by the Air Force and Navy. Iran, in that sense, has been the first real test bed. Cost, volume and future. It is the “but” of any ballistic missile. Each projectile can exceed a million and a half dollars, although the price has been dropping as production increases. The goal is to reach up to 400 units annuallywhich will expand the available inventory and facilitate its sustained use. With future versions that could exceed the 1,000 kilometers rangethe PrSM does not seem just a substitute for the ATACMS. It is the first stone of a terrestrial architecture that seeks to project deep power from solid ground. What is really at stake. In short, the real twist is not that the United States has launched a new missile in a war, but that it has from the ground and against Iran. If he Tomahawk has symbolized precision warfare from the sea, the PrSM aims to represent the return of the tactical ballistic missile as a flexible instrument of regional pressure. And while it is not known with certainty from what ground ally is taking off, the political dimension of that launch will continue to be as relevant as the technical one. Image | CENTCOM, Australian Army, US Army In Xataka | If the question is how much of Europe is within range of Iran’s missiles, the answer is simple: a fairly large In Xataka | The arrival of the B-2s to Iran can only mean one thing: the search for the greatest threat to the United States has begun

more than 600 km/h on a line that has accumulated years of delays

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In 2015, a seven-car prototype in Japan made us dream with the tremendous speeds that the trains of the future would have, with the Japanese country as the main standard bearer. The L0 Series train reached 603 km/h on the Yamanashi test line, becoming the fastest manned railway vehicle ever recorded at the time. More than a decade later, that record still standsalthough the promise of its commercial use has yet to materialize. And the line that is supposed to bring it to travelers accumulates years of delays. magnetic levitation. The L0 Series works via superconducting magnetic levitation, using powerful magnets along the track and in the train that interact to lift the vehicle on the track, completely eliminating physical contact with the tracks. Without friction, without mechanical noise, without wear, and with heart-stopping speeds. The system is known as SCMaglev and uses an electrodynamic suspension, different from that used in the Shanghai maglev. Japan National Railways began researching this type of propulsion in 1962 with a clear objective: to connect Tokyo and Osaka in one hour. They have had that dream for more than six decades. Chūō Shinkansen. This is the maglev line under construction between Tokyo and Nagoya, with plans to extend it to Osaka. The idea is that it will be established between Shinagawa and Nagoya stations, with stops in Sagamihara, Kōfu, Iida and Nakatsugawa. The line is not intended to replace the legendary Tokaido Shinkansen, but it will exist to offer travelers a much faster alternative. The line would connect Tokyo and Nagoya in 40 minutes and, later, Tokyo and Osaka in 67 minutes, at a maximum speed of 505 km/h. Today the fastest Nozomi (Japan’s fastest high-speed train service) takes around two and a half hours between the two cities. With Chūō Shinkansen, the idea is that approximately 90% of the 286-kilometer route to Nagoya passes through tunnels, instead of following the coast, as the Tokaido does. This decision is also the root of much of their problems. ORa prefecture and a river. The main obstacle was that the then governor of Shizuoka, Kawakatsu Heita, denied permission to drill one of the tunnels under the Japanese Southern Alps for environmental reasons. The argument was that the impact studies had been carried out with little rigor and that the excavations could affect the bed of the Oi River. The section in question affected just 8.9 kilometers of tunnel within Shizuoka, but it was enough to block the entire project for years. Without that section, the rest of the work could not be completed. However, the current governor of the region, Yasutomo Suzuki, authorized the geotechnical inspection prior, but the works are still in progress. A calendar full of delays. In 2024, JR Central president Shunsuke Niwa publicly ruled out opening in 2027 and targeted 2034 as the new minimum date. But the story doesn’t end there. Last October, JR Central postponed the arrival to 2035. Construction costs have already skyrocketed by more than 50% to 11 trillion yen (about 61 billion euros), according to RailTech. The section to Osaka, for its part, It would not arrive until 2037 at best. The threat from China. In July of last year, during the World High Speed ​​Congress held in Beijing, the state-owned CRRC presented a maglev prototype Designed to reach 600 km/h. The train runs on rubber wheels at low speed and switches to magnetic levitation when exceeding 150 km/h. The Asia Times shares that it will still take a long time to put it into commercial use, and that market demand, rather than technology, is the main obstacle. But there is more: the T-Flight project from the state company CASIC, which combines magnetic levitation with hyperloop-style vacuum tubes, has already reached 623 km/h in tests in 2024, with the goal of exceeding 1,000 km/h soon. China has also, for years, the only commercial maglev in the world that operates regularly: the Shanghai Maglev, which circulates at 430 km/h. Cover image | Maglev.net In Xataka | The Mayan Train has become a nightmare for Mexico: what seemed like a great plan has run into justice

There are wonderful Androids for less than 700 euros. The point is that almost no one buys them, and Apple knows it

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Yesterday Apple renewed its entry-level iPhone. He iPhone 17e It has arrived as a discreet renewal of a model that, already in 2025, had some important shortcomings. Were consumers outraged? Quite the opposite. He iPhone 16e sold like hot cakesand this is exactly what Apple is looking for again. There is competition, and better. The iPhone 17e has a price of 709 euros. They are not the 959 euros of a iPhone 17but it is not an economical mobile. It is a price for which we can buy authentic high-end phones on Android. For example, the LITTLE F8 Ultrawith Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (same processor that the 1,500 euro phones have), 12 GB of RAM, 120 Hz AMOLED panel with 3,500 nits, 6,500mAh battery with 100W charging. There are dozens of examples like this. Even if we are willing to buy a mobile phone that has been on the market for a few months, we can get a Galaxy S25 or a iPhone 16. Phones that do not have the latest processor, but are superior in the rest of the technical specifications. None of this matters. The most nerd We shake our heads when we look at the technical sheet. But in the real world, the technical sheet is the least important thing. Apple doesn’t sell specs, it sells experience. A cheaper access iPhone than the rest. The latest chip to execute the functions of its older brothers. A design that many find comfortable, practical and pleasant. A higher update cycle than many of its direct rivals. Entry mobile to the Apple ecosystem, completely new and unpretentious. It works for Apple. The iPhone 16e has sold much more than the iPhone SE 2022a model that was more reminiscent of iPhone 6 than to the new Apple phones. It’s a formula that makes sense, one in which an iPhone is sold as a natural leap from a iPhone 11 either 12 (in fact, Apple does not allow comparisons with superior mobile phones on the advertisement page), and not as a technical display. You come from an old iPhone, you want a new one and not break the bank. You buy this one. Go deeper. Nobody sells more high-end mobile phones than Apple, not even in countries like China. The reflection of the iPhone 17e is curious: it is not even a high-end device, but the iPhone 16e managed to sneak into the list of the 10 best-selling mobile phones in the world. Apple does not sell iPhones because they are high-end mobile phones. It sells iPhones because they are iPhones. Image | Xataka In Xataka | iPhone 17 Pro Max, analysis: the change that the most ambitious iPhone needed is not visible to the naked eye

Why it is not advisable to connect the charger to the mobile phone before connecting it to the power

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Putting your phone on charge is a gesture that we do practically every day and it is something that is apparently very simple. Well, it turns out that we are doing it wrong. There is a key detail that many of us overlook and that can have negative consequences for both the cable and the mobile port. There are many recommendations for take care of battery healthsuch as avoiding downloading it to the maximum or charging it to 100%, but there is another factor that is not usually taken into account and that is the order in which we connect the cable. The order of the factors does alter the product And if not Tell my partner Álex Alcoleathe owner of the Lightning cable in the photo below these lines. The fact that the pins have turned black is not a dirt problem, but rather an order problem. Álex used to connect the cable to the cell phone and then to the power, which generates a brief voltage spike that goes directly to the connector. For once nothing happens, but if we do it continuously the result is a fried cable. This is how our colleague Alejandro Alcolea’s Lightning cable looked after several months It is a common phenomenon in any type of plug: you plug it in and a surge occurs. If the cable is already connected to the phone when this happens, a small electrical arc may be created where the pins make contact. This little sparkcan cause the cable pins to become damaged and, over time, the charge begins to fail or we have to move the cable to make contact. If you are wondering if there is a possibility of frying your cell phone with this habit, don’t panic. Smartphones have internal protections to prevent them from being damaged if there is a voltage spike and we are also talking about a very brief spike. The recommended order to charge your mobile Preventing that small spark from damaging the connectors is as simple as reversing the order, that is, connecting the charger to the socket and then connecting it to our mobile phone. In this way, the voltage peak remains contained in the charger and it does not occur when we connect the mobile. Manufacturers like Huawei and Samsung They recommend following this order to avoid possible damage: Plug the charger into the power outlet. Connect the cable to the charger (if separate). Finally, connect the cable to the mobile. What to do if your cell phone doesn’t charge If your cable or the charging port on your phone is starting to fail, the charging order could be a possible reason. To find out, check if the cable pins are blackened like those in the photo at the beginning, although if it is a USB-C it is more difficult to see since they are inside. The most common thing is that dirt has accumulated in the charging port and this does not let the cable connect well. If this is the case, you can clean it using a wooden toothpick, always being very careful not to damage the charging port. It may also be that your mobile does not charge because moisture has entered the port. In this case, try to remove the liquid by tapping it against your hand and leave the phone in a place where there is air flow, never insert anything to remove the liquid as you can make it enter even more. If the problem is not with the cable or the port, it is possible that it is with the battery, so you will have to go through technical service. In Xataka | Quietly, Spain is solving its biggest energy problem: becoming the world’s second largest battery power Cover image | Ivan Linares for Xataka

Iran is not only resisting, it can mess things up

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In just four days of fighting, they have launched hundreds of missiles and drones over several Gulf countries, the Strait of Hormuz has seen paralyzed the transit of a fifth of the world’s oil and gas prices in Europe they have been shot about 50% in a matter of hours. What began as an offensive aimed to quickly neutralize A concrete threat has become a crisis that already affects markets, embassies and military bases throughout the region. It had to be “surgical”. The joint offensive of the United States and Israel was born with an “official” goal: Neutralize the Iranian missile program and dismantle its response capability before it could reorganize. It was assumed that the initial attacks, directed against hardened installations and command centers, would leave Tehran disoriented and with little room to react. However, four days later, the reality is another. Iran has not only continued launching ballistic missiles, but has shown that its military structure I was prepared to absorb decapitations and continue operating. The war has not ended in an initial phase of incontestable air supremacy. The mystery of the arsenal. Washington recognizes that completely eliminating Iranian ballistic missiles is extremely complex. Part of the production is undergroundfortified, and the systems can be disassembled, transported and reassembled. Israel claims to have destroyed hundreds of shuttles, but the shooting continues. The question is no longer where they are, but how many are left. The historical precedent of hunting of Scud in 1991which barely achieved verifiable results despite a massive air campaign, weighs as a warning. Because damage assessment from the air rarely offers absolute certainty. The decentralization that avoided the collapse. I was counting this morning the Financial Times that, after the death of the supreme leader and senior commanders in the first bombings, the Iranian response did not stop, accelerated. Command was previously decentralized to prevent the elimination of key figures from paralyzing the operational chain. The middle I remembered that the units now act with general guidelines already established. This explains the speed with which the attacks began against US bases, energy infrastructure and targets in the Gulf. It does not seem like improvisation, but execution of a designed plan for a long war. Iran’s key naval base in Strait of Hormuz set on fire in attacks Saturation, wear and western cost. American and allied defenses are being tested in an unprecedented scale. Low-cost drones, ballistic missiles short and medium range and electronic warfare capabilities are forcing Patriot and THAAD systems to be deployed on multiple fronts simultaneously. We talk about the embassy protectionbases and energy assets that encompass an immense space. Even when interceptors work, the economic cost is disproportionate: because shooting down a drone can cost several times more than manufacturing it. In addition, the chaos in the sky has caused fire incidents friend and low. In short, the feeling of absolute control, if there was one at any time before the attack, has been eroded. The Gulf as a field of economic pressure. Because Iran has gone beyond direct confrontation with Israel and the United States. It has hit energy facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabiahas tense traffic until it closes a few hours ago through the Strait of Hormuz and has sent gas and oil prices skyrocketing. The Eurozone, in fact, already fears a severe inflationary spike if the conflict continues. The message in this scenario is clear: war is not limited to the exchange of projectiles, it is also fought in the markets. Global economic stability is part of the battlefield. Displacing the neighbors. The Gulf States, which had attempted to maintain cautious neutrality, now find themselves under direct fire. Hundreds of missiles and drones have been detected and intercepted over the Emirates and other countries, which are preparing to counterattack. The scale and speed of the attacks have surprised even those who expected retaliation. The regional outrage growsbut also the bewilderment at the unexpected magnitude of the Iranian response. Tehran, in short, is demonstrating the ability to strike broadly and sustainably. The idea that no one contemplated. So, four days after the start of the offensive, an uncomfortable realization is imposed in Washington and Jerusalem: Iran is not collapsing, far from it. Has not exhausted its launch capacity nor his will to climband your bet combines volume, dispersion and structural resistance. Hence the unknown about the actual size of its arsenal remains open, and as long as that question does not have a definitive answer, each missile intercepted is not a strategic victory, but rather a most uncertain extension. The campaign that was to quickly neutralize the threat thus faces a scenario that did not appear in the initial calculations: Iran not only resists, has margin to expand the conflict and turn it into something much more unstable and explosive than anyone had anticipated. Image | ESA, Hossein Velayati, Planet Labs In Xataka | Europe has opened its doors to the US to attack Iran. Except Spain, which had an ace up its sleeve: a Cold War signature In Xataka | The arrival of the B-2s to Iran can only mean one thing: the search for the greatest threat to the United States has begun

The first four places have records below 8 and that has never happened

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The best score in the history of one of the most difficult exams in the country has been obtained by a 41-year-old doctor with an academic record of 6.7. That phrase explains in a simple way why MIR 2026 has become in a detective movie. While the MIR Spain Association (AME) has requested an audit to the Ministry and there is anonymous testimony that accuses the applicant of copying, the interested party he denies it and offers himself to any verification. It’s morbid. It’s juicy. But it is much more than that. A statistical anomaly… According to the AME, the Ministry’s history shows that there is an abnormal pattern. In 2025the best position with a record of 6.75 was 1458. In 2024, it was 1374. This year, that position is 1. We have to go to 2021 to find something that high and it fell below position 200. But the anomalies do not stop there. According to the AME, the first four positions have records below 8 and no, it is not normal. Something strange had been seen at MIR 2025, but now the situation has become generalized. That is to say, the problem goes beyond whether number 1’s colleagues believe that she has copied or not. …which shows a systemic problem. And, although the Ministry has not yet commented on the matter, the truth is that the problems are piling up. He MIR 2026 is already accumulating delays in the admitted listserrors in academic scales, several resignations from the expert committeeetc, etc, etc. However, the “most difficult exam in Spain” has had problems for years. And it’s not even a Spanish problem. Last year, Argentina found a 33.6% increase in the highest grades with no apparent correlation with previous academic records. 141 applicants were forced to take the exam again and, although none of them achieved their previous scorethere were about 20 that were reported by the Ministry. The interesting thing about all this is the questions that remain open. Because if widespread fraud is demonstrated, this is not about a suspicious person, it is about an entire evaluation system that has entered into crisis; that must be reinvented from the roots. Can we examine today in the same way as before? Image | Duonguyen In Xataka | Artificial intelligences are close to beating doctors in the most difficult thing: understanding patients

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