Month: March 2026

helping to bring down the US

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Currently, a military satellite It can detect movements of vehicles or facilities with a resolution of just a few centimeters, and that information can reach an operator thousands of kilometers away in a matter of minutes. In current conflicts, that information advantage has become one of the most decisive factorseven above brute force. An absence that is not such. At first glance and during the first stages of the war in the eastRussia seemed to be outside the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, limiting itself to diplomatic condemnations and avoiding direct involvement that could escalate the war. However, this apparent passivity has proven misleading, because Moscow has never been a formal military ally of Tehran and its strategy is not to intervene openly, but rather to maximize benefits (geopolitical, economic and strategic) while avoiding direct risks, in a balance where the visible distance hides a much more active involvement. in the shadow. The invisible support. I told a few hours ago exclusively the wall street journal that, far from sending troops or deploying forces, Russia is providing one of the most decisive assets in modern warfare: information and technologyincluding in the equation satellite imagestarget positioning data and drone improvements that allow Iran to fine-tune its attacks against US and allied systems in the region. This type of support, similar to what the West has provided to Ukraine, has improved the precision and effectiveness of Iranian attacks, especially against radars and command centersdemonstrating that the advantage on the battlefield no longer depends only on direct fire, but on who sees better and earlier. And round trip. The truth is that the relationship between both countries has evolved towards a two-way exchange where Iran initially provided the Shahed drones that have transformed the war in Ukraine, while Russia has returned the favor by perfecting those technologies and returning them improved. The result is something of a tactical convergence in which Iranian attack patterns begin to look more and more like those used through Moscow in Europeconsolidating along the way a kind of “closed circuit” of military innovation outside the Western ecosystem. Keep the war alive. They remembered in the Journal that, for the Kremlin, the conflict offers advantages clear enough: diverts US attention and resources away from Ukraine, raises the energy prices that sustain its economy, and weakens the West’s ability to sustain multiple fronts simultaneously. Not only that. At the same time, prolonging the war without bringing about the fall of the Iranian regime allows Russia maintain a key partner within his vision of a multipolar order, one where Tehran acts as an important player against Western influence. Balance calculated against Washington. This support, however, is deliberately kept in a contained levelenough to help Iran, but without crossing lines that provoke a direct confrontation with the United States. In other words, Moscow calibrates its involvement to erode and wear down the American position, but it does so without exposing itself excessively, in a strategy that combines plausible deniability, indirect pressure and selective transfer of capabilities. The war that is not on the maps. If you also want, the complete photo reflects a scenario where the russian position reveals a new form of participation in war conflicts: one where not being physically at the front does not imply being outside of the war, far from it. Thus, through data, technology and experience Tactically, Moscow aims to help shape the battlefield from a distance, demonstrating that in today’s conflicts decisive influence can be exerted without the need to deploy soldiers, but through what allows others to fight more effectively. Image | vantor, IDF Spokesperson’s Unit In Xataka | The war with Iran is leading the US to a plan B that no one imagined: avoiding the nuclear objective at all costs In Xataka | The US nuclear supercarrier has a problem: its marines are sleeping on the ground in the middle of the war with Iran

Nvidia reacts to criticism of DLSS 5 from players and press

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Nvidia introduced DLSS 5 at GTC 2026 as its biggest graphics advancement since ray tracing. In a matter of hourstechnology became the biggest meme generator of the year and turned the entire gaming community against it. After the criticism, the CEO of Nvidia has come to justify the company’s decisions. Spoiler: the situation has not improved. Almost unanimous rejection. Nvidia presented DLSS 5 at GTC 2026 as an evolution that goes beyond upscaling traditional. The system analyzes the color and motion vectors of each frame and applies an AI model to generate photorealistic lighting and materials anchored to the game’s original 3D data. However, a good part of the community and professionals industry called DLSS 5 “AI slop.” The examples used by Nvidia as a demonstration have been the spearhead of these problems: Grace Ashcroft from ‘Resident Evil Requiem’ with more pronounced cheekbones, fuller lips and uniform skin, or characters from ‘Starfield’ who gain facial resolution but at the cost of aesthetic coherence… A fundamental error that came from assuming that “more photorealistic” is equivalent to “better”, when decades of video game design point in a direction that is, at the very least, complementary. Nvidia’s response. Jensen Huang responded to the controversy during a question session in GTC 2026 itself, in what was the CEO’s first public reaction to the general unrest. His words left no room for ambiguity: “Well, first of all, people are completely wrong.” Their technical argument was that, according to Huang, DLSS 5 combines developer-created geometry and textures with generative AI, leaving control in the hands of art teams. Developers can adjust the model to fit the intended art direction, rather than handing that process over entirely to AI. The manager insisted that It’s not about post-processing at the frame level.but rather generative control at the geometry level, what Nvidia calls “content-controlled generative AI”, adding generative capacity over the game’s existing geometry without altering artistic control. Huang added that studios can also explore stylized or non-photorealistic results depending on the type of game they want to build, and that players who don’t want to activate DLSS 5 they can just ignore it and continue with current scaling techniques. Bethesda supported that position. The study clarified that what was shown was a very preliminary version. Calculation errors. There were those who pointed out that the presentation of DLSS 5 in the middle of a keynote mostly dedicated to the cloud and enterprise AI, before an audience already extremely polarized with AI, turns Huang’s statements into ammunition that will be repeated until Nvidia manages to convincingly explain what DLSS 5 is and why gamers and developers need it. Comparisons have been read to Apple’s “Antennagate” (when the company’s response to criticism was perceived as arrogance): being right and communicating it poorly is like not being right. What’s behind. PC Gamer also points to a deeper debate: if it was previously possible to modify the graphical style of a game through adjustments or mods, hardware-assisted generative AI represents a shortcut controlled by large technology companies that could radically transform how artistic authorship is perceived in video games. It remains to be resolved whether when games arrive that have integrated DLSS 5 from the beginning and with a defined artistic direction they will change that perception. There it will be detected, without a doubt, who in this entire battle was really wrong. In Xataka | NVIDIA is going to spend $4 billion on photonics companies. He is preparing for what is coming

One of the 100 most harmful species in the world has settled in Spain. It’s a cute domestic turtle

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These are not good times for Spanish tortoises. On the peninsula we only have two native species of freshwater turtle: the leprous ones (Mauremys leprosa) and the European ones (Emys orbicularis). Both are in decline and it is not (only) because of hunting and the destruction of their habitats; It is, above all, for something much more prosaic: the hundreds of turtles that are sold every year and that they end up abandoned in rivers, reservoirs or ponds. This is not new; we have been around since 97 prohibiting the sale of more and more exotic turtles. The problem is that the situation has gotten completely out of hand. The turtles have become a real plague in the interior provinces. Turtles are a terrible gift. And, as I say, we have known this for almost 30 years. The State (in 1997, in 2013 and in 2025) has successively prohibited the sale of more and more species of turtles. It hasn’t helped much: every time a species is banned, it is replaced by another. Especially between individuals. They all end up in the same way: in the natural environment. The best example is less than a year old: in May 2025, the Ministry expanded the Spanish Catalog of Invasive Exotic Species incorporating the two genera of turtles (Pseudemys and Mauremys) that the stores began to sell when the Trachemys in 2013. There is no systematic study of the problem, but the signs are clear. In Salamanca, for example there is confirmed presence of painted turtles and Florida red-bellied turtles. And in Extremadura, according to the Boardthere are eight exotic turtles for every native one in the Guadiana. In Catalonia, to finish the walk through the peninsular geography, 17 different species have been found in different natural areas. And it’s not nonsense. After all, the Florida turtle is one of the 100 most harmful invasive alien species in the world. Although They have been banned for more than 30 years throughout Europe, they continue to wreak havoc. These species represent the second cause of biodiversity loss in the world. What to do if we have a turtle at home? It is important to note that, one way or another, it is only legal to have banned turtles at home if they were purchased before the ban and were declared at the time to the relevant authority. But its transfer, sale or reproduction is prohibited; and, of course, release them into the natural environment. Image | Pedro Novales In Xataka | There are more and more turtles on the beaches of the Spanish Mediterranean. This is not good news for anyone involved.

The “shitification” of the internet is everywhere and seems inexorable and inevitable. Norway does not agree

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When we say that any time in the past was better, perhaps we are erring on the side of idealizing the past, but when it comes to the Internet the phrase becomes more relevant. We have normalized online experiences to degrade with fewer features, more ads, new subscriptions… The only thing missing was the AI ​​garbage to finish finishing it off. It seems like nothing can stop the shittification of the internet. Nothing less Norway. A day in the life of a “shitter”. This is how it is titled the video that the Norwegian Consumer Council has published to report a situation. It shows a man who makes holes in his socks, saws the leg of the table so that it is limp, dries some markers with a hairdryer… He defines himself as a shitter: “What I do is take things that are perfectly fine and make them worse,” he says. The video is very funny and is part of a campaign against a not so funny problem: the degradation of digital services. The organization has developed a complete report in which they describe the problem and propose a plan to address it. Shitification. It is a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow and declared word of the year by Macquarie Dictionary in 2024. The definition is as follows: The progressive deterioration of a service or product caused by a decrease in the quality of the service provided, especially in the case of an online platform, and as a consequence of the search for profits We are not talking about natural degradation, but something deliberate that responds to an economic objective. A clear case has been that of Netflix, which not only chased shared accountsbut eliminated functions such as the possibility of casting from the mobile phone to the television. Not to mention the ads on payment planssomething that has spread to practically all streaming services. Theard everywhere at once. But this phenomenon reaches all types of services, not just streaming. We see it in the form of more ads on apps like Instagram (many of them of scamsby the way), It happened to me with the security camera app I had at home and there are even those who bought a connected refrigerator for thousands of euros so that they could start ads appear on the screen. Of course, companies offer you a solution to remove annoying ads: ✨pay a subscription✨. The phases of shitification. It is not something that happens overnight, but first they attract you with an attractive service, that works well and offers advantages. Once they have a solid user base – when they have caught us – the party begins. A good example was Uber, which in its beginnings offered very low prices to present itself as a more attractive alternative to taxis and now it’s more expensive. Generative AI makes it worse. According to the Norwegian report, far from solving the problem, AI is making it even worse. He junk content made with AI It is the most visible face, but they cite many more examples, such as Google AI Summarieswhich are often inaccurate and weaken the information ecosystem. There are also the AI-based advertising algorithms that make more ads reach us, platforms that are forcefully integrating AI everywhere, sometimes taking advantage of it to raise prices. Norway’s proposal. The use of this type of practices is widespread and its advance seems unstoppable, but Norway proposes three lines of action to reverse it: Give power back to users: that we can decide which operating system to install on our devices, that interoperability is mandatory, protect “de-shit” tools such as ad blockers and alternative recommendation algorithms. Stop depending on big technology: force them to “open the doors” and use open standards, finance and promote free software, using public administration as a lever. Apply the law: Norway proposes raising sanctions even further and tightening controls. The European Digital Markets Act has already taken steps in this direction, such as USB-C on iPhone or the sideloading on iOS. However, managing to end this degradation completely seems like a titanic task. Norway has sent letters to fourteen countries, including the United States, asking them to take action. Image | YouTube In Xataka | Thanks to AI we can now stop reading and writing as much as we used to. According to science, it is the worst for Alzheimer’s

Andalusia wants to recover the experience of its retired teachers, but sets one condition: that they do it for free

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The Junta de Andalucía has created a new figure in Spanish public education: emeritus collaborating teachers. The idea is that retired teachers They can rejoin training tasks in schools and institutes to share their experience with active teachers and students. The Board’s proposal It is collected under the Red Share Experience program and can mobilize up to 2,500 retirees a year throughout the community. There is a detail in this measure that has not gone unnoticed: the retired teachers who participate will do so completely voluntarily and will not charge anything, as indicated in the Decree 12/2026 It was approved by the Government Council on February 4, 2026 and has just come into force after its publication in the Official Gazette of the Junta de Andalucía. ​The objective: not to lose the experience. The Ministry of Educational Development and Vocational Training has presented This measure is considered “pioneer in Spain”, and its objective is to take advantage of the knowledge accumulated by teachers who have spent decades in the classrooms and put it at the service of centers that need it. In the standard, the Board defines the figure of emeritus collaborating teachers, retired teachers with a long teaching career who maintain their link with educational centers and carry out advisory, training and support tasks in complementary activities. The program has legal backing under the Andalusian Education Law of 2007, which in its article 23.4 already contemplated the possibility of retired teachers collaborating in libraries and support management teams. This new decree expands and regulates that framework for the first time. What requirements must be met to participate?. It is not enough to have been a teacher to participate in the project, a series of requirements are required. You must be retired for any reason other than permanent disability, be under 75 years of age when submitting the application and have worked for at least 15 years in public or subsidized non-university centers in Andalusia. Furthermore, you cannot have received a firm sanction for serious or very serious misconduct in the five years prior to retirement, nor have you been convicted of crimes against sexual freedom. A maximum limit of 2,500 places is set for the entire community for each annual call. a report of the UGT union of 2022 confirms that in Spain 34.5% of non-university teachers are over 50 years old, while in secondary school this percentage rises to 38.4%, which indicates that there will be a significant number of potential candidates for this project in the coming years. What they can do and what they are prohibited from doing. The decree that has just been published imposes a very clear red line from the beginning: the emeritus “will not occupy jobs or perform functions typical of active professors.” What they can do is accompany newly arrived teachersmentor intern students, energize the school library, organize talks and workshops, participate in innovation projects, guide students in their academic path or collaborate on the center’s social networks and publications, among other activities. However, although they do not receive a salary for their contribution, the emeritus do have some compensation. The Board guarantees them insurance that covers accidents, illness and civil liability. At the end of each course they will receive an official certification and will have free access to cultural institutions under the same conditions as active teachers. How and when to apply for a place. The program works through two methods of incorporation. On the one hand, there is the open route that allows retired teachers to present a project that any center in Andalusia can incorporate if interested. The concrete route, on the other hand, is designed for those who want to collaborate with a specific school or institute. In both cases, the project must fit into the center’s plan and have the prior approval of the Teaching Staff and the School Council. If there are more candidates than places available in a single center, the tiebreaker is resolved in order of seniority in that center or in the teaching staff. In Xataka | In Spain, those over 65 years of age are working like never before. It’s not passion for work: it’s for retirement age Image | Unsplash (Maxim Tolchinskiy)

Skyscrapers are full of glass, so some Spanish researchers have had an idea: let them serve as "solar panels"

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Every 60 minutes, the Sun bathes the Earth with enough energy to cover the world’s consumption for an entire year. The data, remembered by the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM)it’s overwhelming. But there is a problem: harnessing all that energy in our cities hits a literal wall. Classic solar roofs are becoming too small for us in increasingly dense cities, and hanging rigid and heavy panels on the facades of buildings is not a realistic option. To avoid this aesthetic and space blockage, the laboratories have found a pioneering solution: using new two-dimensional materials. These are microscopic layers that will allow the windows of any skyscraper to be converted into totally invisible solar panels. With Spanish seal. The Silicon and New Concepts for Solar Cells (SyNC) research group of the Solar Energy Institute (IES) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) has managed to manufacture micro-prototypes of ultra-thin and highly efficient solar cells. The secret of this technology lies in the so-called two-dimensional photovoltaic materials. Imagine a sheet so thin that it is only a few atoms thick; For all practical purposes, it is so thin that physics considers it to lack a third dimension. Science knows this family of compounds with a complex name, transition metaldicalkogenides (TMDC), among which molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and tungsten diselenide (WSe2) stand out. Their great rarity—and their greatest virtue—is that, despite being an almost invisible layer, they have an extraordinary capacity to absorb sunlight. In Xataka Solar panels have an invisible and very brief moment in which they do not work. And solving it is key to your future The actual scope. To understand this technology, researchers published a study in the scientific journal Nano Energy. In it, they simulated what would happen if the façade of a real skyscraper, the Torre Picasso in Madrid, were covered with semi-transparent windows made with these materials. The results estimate that between 16% and 23% of the building’s daily electricity consumption could be covered. If this technology is also combined with areas of opaque modules, the generation could exceed 30% of the energy needs of the skyscraper. Natural light, real colors and savings on the bill Historically, the big “but” of solar windows has been the poor visual quality. Alternative technologies, such as organic or perovskite cells, often act as a filter that colors the light entering the room in unnatural reddish, yellow or brown tones. As explained by UPM researchersthe structure of TMDC materials solves this root problem: they allow a very balanced absorption of visible light, which eliminates the problem of unwanted “coloring” of light. The result is lighting with a natural and warm tone, achieving a Color Rendering Index (CRI) greater than 90, a very high quality metric for work spaces. In addition to generating electricity, in very sunny places like Spain, these glasses naturally block excessive glare. This means that the skyscraper not only produces its own energy, but also saves a lot of money by not having to turn on the air conditioning as much. From the microscopic laboratory to the factory. Creating these ultra-thin solar cells is a work of very high precision. To manufacture the prototypes in the laboratory, the UPM team has used a technique called hot-pick-up. Using this method, they use a small transparent bubble to select, collect and deposit fragments of the materials, creating tailored stacks that combine the best properties of each one. But the goal is not to stay in the laboratory. IES-UPM researchers are already working with new techniques to scale this process and cover large areas, such as entire windows. According to the scientists themselves“through spraying and deposition techniques of these solutions, manufacturing processes could be scaled, reducing costs and allowing the industrialization of this disruptive technology.” The ace in the hole: catch the lost heat. The potential of these two-dimensional materials goes far beyond solar windows. Another investigation from the same team, published in the scientific journal ACS Applied Energy Materials, demonstrates that by modifying molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) with an element called niobium, the material acquires impressive thermoelectric properties. More simply, this means that in the future, these materials could not only capture sunlight, but could also have applications in thermal sensors or in the recovery of energy from the heat wasted by machines or buildings themselves. {“videoId”:”x81qnhf”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Is it possible to generate energy at zero cost?”, “tag”:”Energy”, “duration”:”109″} The new skin of the city. The lightness, flexibility and low manufacturing cost of these solar cells makes them one of the most promising options to achieve the desired “green cities”. Two-dimensional photovoltaic technology shows us that the ecological transition in dense urban environments no longer depends only on finding space on roofs to place large rigid panels. The real paradigm shift consists of transforming the very “skin” of buildings – their windows, their walls, their facades – into active sources of clean energy, ensuring that any surface can be an ally against climate change. Image | Photo by Arthur Mazi on Unsplash  Xataka | Plastic solar panels have always been more of a dream than reality: China has just changed that (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Skyscrapers are full of glass, so some Spanish researchers have had an idea: let them serve as “solar panels” was originally published in Xataka by Alba Otero .

Beijing just gave the best news to NVIDIA

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NVIDIA has been caught in the crossfire of the trade war between the United States and China for more than a year. Its most powerful chips could not be sold to the Asian giant because Washington required export licenses and later Beijing did not give the green light to imports. This week the two fronts have been unlocked simultaneously and Jensen Huang has taken advantage of his annual developers conference to announce it out loud. Your factories they are starting enginesand the future is brighter than ever for her. H200 chips, unlocked. The H200 chip, NVIDIA’s second most powerful chip today, had become the center of trade and technological tensions between China and the United States. The Trump administration had already granted export licenses but of course, as long as she got her cut. Which was missing it was him approval from Beijingthat according to Reuters It has arrived this week for many of the customers who were demanding access to these chips. Among them are ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba and DeepSeek. China is a gold mine. Before the restrictions imposed For the US, China represented 13% of NVIDIA’s total turnover. The export veto was highly criticized by Jensen Huang, who did not stop criticize the measureof try to avoid it and to explain that what the US had done was not protect its technology, but rather shoot itself in the foot. During this blockade, Chinese companies have been advancing both in the development of AI models and in the development of their own chips. They still have room for improvement, but this effort to “become independent” from US technology is already bearing fruit and perhaps would not have occurred if it were not for the US veto. There will also be Groq chips. NVIDIA will not only export its H200 chips, but is preparing a version of its AI inference accelerators for the Chinese market. Specifically, we are talking about Groq chips, a company in which NVIDIA invested $20 billion to “license” its technology, although In practical terms I have acquired it. These chips are especially interesting because they are not used to train AI models, but to execute and “serve” them. This is the market that is growing the fastest right now, and where competition is toughest. But China already has inference chips. Companies like Baidu they are already producing its own inference chips, which means that NVIDIA will not enter the Chinese market from a monopoly position, but as another competitor. What is striking here is the fact that Groq chips are not refined versions nor are they adapted to this market according to the cited sources. in Reuters: They will be the same ones that companies in the US or other parts of the world use. China will continue without access to Vera Rubin. This week NVIDIA presented a new line of products built around its next AI chips, the Vera Rubin. These chips cannot be sold to China due to current restrictions, so at NVIDIA they have found a hybrid architecture: Vera Rubin for markets where it can operate freely, and Groq as an inference component for China. NVIDIA is brimming with optimism, and with good reason. Jensen Huang spoke precisely in his inaugural conference about how promising the company’s future looks. Previous projections spoke of medium-term revenues of $500 billion for its Blackwell and Rubin chips. Inference solutions and this “opening” to China now mean that this forecast is doubled: Huang hopes to achieve at least $1 trillion in cumulative orders by 2027a simply dizzying figure that makes it clear that NVIDIA’s business seems to be in an enviable state of health. Image | NVIDIA In Xataka | DLSS 5: Millions invested in AI graphics improvements so people say it looks like an Instagram beauty filter

How can you know at what time the 2026 solar eclipse can be seen in each neighborhood or city?

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Let’s tell you at what time will your neighborhood or city go dark due to solar eclipse of 2026. We know that this event will take place on August 12, and that it will begin to be seen in Spain at 7:30 p.m. in A Coruña, which is when the sky will begin to darken. However, since the earth is not flat, it will not be seen equally everywhere, and the route that total darkness will take will be at different times depending on where you live. What we are going to tell you is how to know how much can be seen in your city and the exact hours. All the eclipse data in your neighborhood or city To obtain this data, we are going to use an official website of the National Geographic Institute created for this eclipse. You have to enter visualizers.ign.es/eclipses/2026and at the top write your zip code or location name in the box that appears. You can also search for the site by putting a pin on the map. When you do, you will go to a page where On the left you have an informative column. In it you will be told things such as whether the total eclipse is going to arrive or it will only be partial, as well as the start times of the partial eclipse and the total or annular eclipse wherever you have chosen. On this website, what you have to do is move the temporary bar that appears belowwhere it says Evolution of the eclipse. So, when the sky is going to be completely covered the map will turn blackand you will be able to see from the beginning of the total eclipse to how long it will last. This tool can be very useful, because it will allow you to organize yourself to see the eclipse correctly. If you are going to travel somewhere or if it will be in your city, you will be able to know the exact times, as well as the differences between where you are and nearby areas. In Xataka Basics | Solar eclipses visible in Spain: these are the three astronomical events of 2026, 2027 and 2028

There are many wireless alternatives to the HDMI cable. The problem is that none of them work as well as the HDMI cable.

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That the tangle of cables in our homes is well organized is something that it makes us obsessed for years. Normally, when we talk about cable management we usually refer to the workspace, but we also can be a problem in our salonswhere there are cables that no matter how much we try to replace them, they are still there. One of them is HDMI. Although there are technologies to be able to watch content on a television or projector without having to pull a physical cable, HDMI cable is still the best and sometimes only option. Alternatives to HDMI cable HDMI cables have the drawbacks of any cable: they limit mobility, cause visual clutter and, depending on the device we want to connect, it is very likely that we will need adapters. Fortunately there are technologies that allow us to do without it. Chromecast and Airplay Google TV Streamer, formerly known as Chromecast They are the most popular and well-known options since they have the support of large companies such as Google and Apple. More and more televisions integrate both systems, so it is no longer necessary to purchase a separate device. In the case of Chromecast classic, technically not a wireless solution, But it does allow us to launch the content we want to see without having to use one expressly to connect the mobile phone to the TV. Miracast Smart View on a Samsung mobile. Image: Xataka Home One of the solutions that has tried to replace HDMI is Miracastusually known as Mirror screen or Smart View on Samsung phones. It is a protocol that works through Wi-Fi Direct It allows two devices to detect each other and we can mirror the screen of one on the other. This point is important since it only works in mode mirroringthat is, that clone screen contentit does not extend it or play a video from an app like a Chromecast does. With Miracast, if you want to watch a video that you have saved on your mobile on TV, you will have to leave your cell phone on and the same video playing on it. The advantage is that it is a cross-platform standard and allows you to send FullHD video with almost no latency. That’s when it works well, because Connection problems are quite common. Wireless HDMI Kits If you can’t (or don’t want to) run an HDMI cable to a display or projector, a solution may be to use a wireless kit. It consists of an emitter that sends the AV signal wirelessly to a receiver, which will be connected to the destination device, such as the TV. There are quite a few options available at relatively affordable prices, such as this one from UGREEN that costs less than 60 euros or a little more expensive, like this one from VENTION for 119 euros. The problem with these types of solutions is mainly the interference and, above all, latency. In addition, they have limitations such as lack of HDR support and many do not support 4K video. HDMI is still necessary Although there are alternatives without cable, they are just that, alternatives, not substitutes. Yes, there are proposals that improve HDMI, such as GPMI standard developed by an organization of more than 50 Chinese companies. This interface promises transfers of up to 192Gbps and supports 8K video, but even if it manages to displace HDMI You still need a cable. There are no wireless alternatives that improve the performance and stability of a physical HDMI cable, especially in scenarios where latency is key such as competitive video games. Whether on the console or the PC, the cable will always be the preferred system in this case. It is also best if you are interested in obtaining the best video and audio quality, for example when connecting a home cinema system, and you prioritize connection stability. Of course, you have to choose the cable well and the port to which we connect it to get the most out of it. Image | Xataka In Xataka | The curse of hotels are TVs that do not allow you to use the HDMI port. The solution is obvious: hack them

We have been looking for fire hydrants in photos for years to prove that we are not a robot. Turns out we were the robot after all

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It happens to us every day: we try to enter a website and suddenly a grid of poor quality photos requires us to identify all the traffic lights, buses or even fire hydrants even though in Spain, for example, they do not have the characteristic design that is applied in the US. When we solve these puzzles we are not only proving that we are not a robot: we are working for Google. Google slaves. In the early 2000s, bots were destroying the internet, but a young man named Luis von Ahn had a great idea to stop them. Believe CAPTCHAa system that forced us to identify distorted words to prove that we were human and thus be able to access the content. That system evolved and Google bought the idea and turned it into a perfect system for something we have barely noticed: working for it. From Google Maps to Waymo. Since then, Google has not stopped taking advantage of the system for two intertwined objectives. The first, effectively, protect us from bots. The second, also known but much juicier for the company, is to turn us all into information taggers. Internet users first recognized words and became a gigantic OCR system that was applied to Google Maps. Then, with images, we ended up helping Google’s image recognition systems improve significantly. That has served, among other things, to feed the Waymo autonomous driving systems. Statistical consensus. How does Google know that when we choose a fire hydrant or a bus we are responding correctly? It knows this through the so-called “statistical consensus.” Google usually presents images in pairs: one of them (the control image) has already been previously identified by thousands of people, while the other is an “orphan” image that its computer vision algorithms cannot decipher. If you guess the known one, Google assumes you are human and uses your answer about the unknown image to feed its database. We are the product. All of our readers were probably already very aware of this reality, but now a debate is beginning to activate about the ethics and ownership of digital work. It is something that we already saw with social networks, which were fed by our content, and that certainly also applies to Google: to what extent is it legal for a company to have a huge AI infrastructure thanks to the billions of hours of unpaid “microwork” of its users? Here the famous “If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.“. It is true that these Google systems have protected us from bots and we have not paid for them “with money”… but with those micro-jobs that we have carried out when solving the puzzles of the reCAPTACHA systems. Is it possible to poison the algorithm? Here also doubts arise about the true reliability of the system. If a mass group of users decided to mislabel traffic lights or fire hydrants in an organized way, would a self-driving car make dangerous decisions in the real world? That risk seems reasonable, and considering that AI models are increasingly more capable in abstract reasoning and even overcoming captchasan attack by AI bots that did something like this poses a threat worrying. The invisible CAPTCHA. Google itself knows that visual CAPTCHAs are no longer so insurmountable for machines, so it has been moving its systems towards reCAPTCHA v3a invisible system that does not require you to look for buses, zebra crossings or fire hydrants that you will never see on a street in Malaga or Bilbao. Instead, this system opaquely analyzes your behavior in front of the PC: how you move the mouse, what cookies you have installed and how you navigate. Or what is the same: Google thinks it knows how a human behaves when you’re going to click on “I’m not a robot”… when we’ve been working like robots for years and solving those puzzles. a brilliant idea. What is clear is that CAPTCHA has been a brilliant idea with implications that not even Google could have anticipated. In fact, it has turned this tool into a way to feed its artificial intelligence systems with our help, without us practically knowing (or caring much). But you know: the next time a website asks you to identify fire hydrants before entering it, remember that you are not demonstrating your humanity. You’re signing on to the afternoon shift at one of the largest data factories on the planet. In Xataka | The US blocked its most advanced chips from China to stop its AI. The result: China makes tokens cheaper than anyone else

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