Month: March 2026

It’s called MACROHARD and “no one else can do it”

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Elon Musk is determined to unify his empire. After the purchase of xAI by SpaceXhas now announced a joint project between Tesla and its artificial intelligence company. It is about the AI agent MACROHARD, and before going into details, let’s go with what is most important for Musk himself: it is a mockery of Microsoft and software that wants to emulate the functioning of entire companies. Also something that no other company can do right now. According to Elon, of course. MACROHARD. If Microsoft is “small soft”, MACROHARD is “huge hard”. Elon Musk with his usual things, but beyond the joke, the project is an umbrella that unites the capabilities of Grok and those of Digital Optimus. Grok is the conductor, xAI’s large language model that calls the shots thanks to its “deep understanding of the world.” Digital Optimus is the executing “arm”, the software that manages the execution of a task in real time. From what Musk has stated, it is a vitamin agent, something in which American industryand Chinais putting all his efforts into it. Also with the General Artificial Intelligencebut that is a different story. like a brain. The tycoon has compared the operation of the agent with the theory of dual processing of the brain. While Grok is the one who sets the reason, the pause and the intention, Digital Optimus is the one who carries out the instinctive action, whatever that means. If we land it better, Grok has the knowledge Being an LLM and Digital Optimus is the one that executes the action. As? Well, being able to “process the last five seconds of what appears on a computer screen and execute actions with the keyboard and mouse in real time. If you want to know more about how it works, you will have to wait because in Musk’s message there is not much more to say about this. Basically, he has described an agent like those in which the competitors are already working from xAI, but Musk claims it can “simulate all of a company’s operations.” “It’s a funny reference to Microsoft” – Elon Musk AI4 chip. The most interesting thing about MACROHARD is that part of “hardware” that can also give rise to the name. Tesla and xAI have been working on their own chips for some time that allow them to better train AI and more optimal inference. After abandoning its chip project a few months ago, this 2026 Tesla rescued it and noted that they were making enormous progress. Maybe not yet to train the model with heavy load, something that NVIDIA chips largely take care of (because NVIDIA is involved in all AI companies, big or small), but yes for that inference task. And that’s where this Tesla and xAI project has a key advantage. The agent is designed to run on Tesla’s AI4 chip along with “relatively moderate use of the NVIDIA hardware that already has xAI and it is much more expensive.” The key is that the AI4 is much cheaper than NVIDIA’s solutions and is also the ‘home-made’ solution, allowing Tesla and xAI to scale the system as far as they want. Provided that TSMCwhich is the company that manufactures them, has bandwidth, we already know who the two main clients are in case of a bottleneck. Revived project. And it is also curious that, just like the own chip projectMACROHARD has been rescued from the underworld he was in. Days before Musk revealed the project, the media Business Insider He noted that the agent had stalled due to factors such as a hiring freeze and the departure of key engineers such as Toby Pohlen, a founding member of xAI who was going to lead the project, but who left the company two weeks later. Perhaps with that part of it being a system powered by its own and cheap chips, what Musk says that “no other company can do it yet” is fulfilled, but it will not be because they are not trying. Outside the long shadow of NVIDIA, OpenAI continues to develop own chips from Broadcom. And Goal, after some lurchesthere is also preparing chips for inference. Photo by Planet Labs Now all that remains is to see less talk and something tangible about MACROHARD’s capabilities and whether, being under the Tesla umbrella, the project comes to fruition. And one last curiosity: MACROHARD is like Elon christening he Colossus 2 data center…with which he already laughed at Microsoft. Images | sherwood, Gage Skidmore In Xataka | Elon Musk’s Grokipedia is not exactly the best place to get objective information. ChatGPT doesn’t care

what it is, what it is for, prices and how you can get one to use in your projects

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Let’s explain to you what it is and how to get a ChatGPT API. This is an essential code to be able to link the models of artificial intelligence GPT when developing an app or creating a workflow that includes them. Because in order for a third-party project to use GPT, you will need this key. We are going to start this article by explaining what it is and what it is for. API of ChatGPT, trying to make sure anyone can understand the concept. And then, we will tell you step by step how to get your OpenAI API to use GPT models in your projects. What is the ChatGPT API and what is it for? ChatGPT is the name of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chat. But basically, it is an intermediary to interact with their artificial intelligence model, which is called GPT. With each new version of GPT, ChatGPT gains new features and power. We can say that GPT is the engine, and therefore you will also be able to link it to other third-party services, in addition to your applications. Thus, these apps or services will be able to knock on GPT’s door and return results to you. However, for a service to use GPT, a bridge is needed, an intermediary, and that is where an API or application programming interface comes into play. APIs are a kind of communication bridge between an app and an external servicein this case the API serves to connect other applications with ChatGPT, or rather, the artificial intelligence model that powers it. To give an example, imagine that I want to create an artificial intelligence bot. Within this bot I would need an AI model, an engine that processed my requests. But of course, an artificial intelligence model can weigh gigas or terabytes, and I can’t afford to include it within the app. Then I will have to connect the bot with an external AI hosted on its own servers. The idea would be that when you write something to my bot, this bot sends my message to the AI, and that when the AI ​​generates the response it reaches the bot and it can show it to me. And since the bot and the AI ​​are on different servers, possibly in different countries, I’m going to need a bridge. And this bridge is the API. The GPT API is paid. You can create it for free, but then you will need to purchase token packs. This is like purchasing credit packages to use the API. When you make a request, depending on the processing it requires and the task involved, you will spend these tokens or tokens, and when you run out you will have to buy more. But in exchange, what you have is the possibility of use ChatGPT in your projects to create your own chatbot or assistant, to automate tasks, to analyze texts, videos or audio and make transcriptions and summary, generate code, and ultimately for whatever you need. You will have the AI ​​within the application, but not natively, but you will have connected both. Token types and API prices The price of GPT APIs It depends on the model you want to use.. If you are going to use the most powerful model it will be more expensive, since it is a model that consumes more resources. Meanwhile, the lighter models will have lower prices. There are three types of tokensso it is advisable to know them all. Entry tokens They are the ones that you send to the model with prompts, instructions, texts to analyze or contexts that you add. For example, the prompt “Summarize this article on artificial intelligence in 5 lines” has 200 tokens, and costs 200 entry. Exit Tokens They are what the model generates as a response. Come on, what consumes the text or image with which you are responded to. If an answer has 500 tokens, these are how many you spend. These tokens are more expensive because the model has to generate the new text, which involves a computational calculation. Cache entry tokens are when you repeat the same context in multiple calls. When you have a conversation in the same chat and on the same topic, the system temporarily saves everything you said before so as not to process everything completely. As for the price, it depends on whether you use a full or lighter model. This is a table with prices of current flagship models. You will also be able to generate APIs for older models, which will have cheaper prices. Model GPT-5.4 GPT-5mini Description Our most competent model for professional work A faster and cheaper version of GPT-5 for well-defined tasks Entry tokens $2.50/million tokens $0.250/million tokens Output tokens $15/million tokens $2/million tokens Tokens cached entry $0.25/million tokens $0.025/million tokens When you generate an API, you will be able to buy token packs of the three types, which They will be spent as you use the API. So, when the tokens of one of the types run out you will have to proceed to buy more. How to get your GPT API To obtain your GPT API you will have to enter platform.openai.com/chat and log in with your ChatGPT account. Here in the left column press where it says API keyswithin the section Manage. Inside this page press where it says Create new secret key. This will take you to a screen where you can configure your API, linking it to a project, giving it a name or configuring its restrictions if you want them to have them. When you have it to your liking, click on Create secret key. And that’s it. with this you will create an APIor as the platform calls it, Secret key or secret key. This is the key you will have to enter when you want to link GPT to a third-party service. In Xataka Basics | ChatGPT apps: what they are and how to use them to give … Read more

the wearable AI recorder that’s not for everyone, but it’s perfect for some

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When I tried the Plaud Note ProI came to a conclusion that I did not expect: I was one of the very few gadgets of AI that justified being a device and not simply an application. The question I ask myself now, weeks after having the NotePin S on me, is whether its spiritual successor can say the same. The answer is not so clean. The NotePin S arrives as the wearable version of that same proposal. Same brain, different packaging. Instead of a card that lives glued to the iPhone by MagSafe, here you go a small 17 gram oval that you can pin to your lapel, hang around your neck, wear on your wrist or pin with a magnetic pin. Plaud presented it at this year’s CES with the promise that capturing what you say would never require taking out your phone again. When you first hold it in your hand, the thought is almost identical to the one I had with the Note Pro: how well finished this is. Solid materials, premium feel, that type of product that does not boast of being expensive but suggests it. The finish of the Plaud NotePin S. Image: Xataka. The box is also unusually neat for a startup: magnetic clip, pin, necklace cord, bracelet and charging base included from the beginning, something that with the original NotePin required a separate purchase. All this comes with the Plaud NotePin S box. Image: Xataka. Image: Xataka. The most relevant change compared to the previous model is small and huge at the same time: they have replaced the pressing gesture with a physical button. The original NotePin had a problem for some users, who were encountering recordings that had never started because the touch gesture had not responded well. The S solves this with a long press to record, a press to stop, and a short press during recording to mark a highlight (one of its best features). Simple. Works. I’ve spent a few weeks wearing it in different formats: The clip on the lapel is the most natural in face-to-face meetings. It is the image that crowns this article. The magnetic pin, the most elegant. The cord-necklace, the most comfortable for everyday use outside of formal contexts. The bracelet, on the other hand, is the option that convinces me the least: the material feels below the level of the rest of the kit, and in a world where almost everyone already wears a watch, adding another element on the wrist is not very practical. With the cord to hang it around your neck. Image: Xataka. With the bracelet adapter to wear it on the wrist, with a form factor similar to that of typical activity bracelets. Image: Xataka. Here in a slightly more inclined view… Image: Xataka. …and here on the side so that the thickness can be distinguished. Image: Xataka. What does work consistently is recording. The microphone picks up well up to about three meters, which is enough for most meetings. The transcription, processed in the app using models from OpenAI, Google or Anthropic of your choice, is accurate in Spanish without the type of errors that would cause you to lose confidence in the system. Automatic summaries, especially when you have marked highlights During the conversation, they are the most useful final product: what previously required rereading the entire transcript now appears organized and immediately actionable. There is a novelty in the ecosystem that deserves special attention: along with the hardware, Plaud has launched a desktop application for Mac and PC that records Zoom, Google Meet or Teams meetings in the background without adding any bot to the call. It is an important distinction because similar alternatives appear as visible participants in the meeting, which makes many interlocutors uncomfortable. Example of a recording made with the Plaud NotePin S seen in the Plaud interface. In the screenshot you can see the summary, much more extensive and structured than we could expect. More than a summary, it is a complete and detailed outline. Image: Xataka. A sample of some of the templates with which we can tell Plaud “how” to generate a transcription and the subsequent treatise. Very useful. Image: Xataka. And another example of a summary, in this case we can see how he makes the quotes in the language of the recording, English; but it offers us the entire summary in our native language, Spanish. Image: Xataka. The Plaud app does not appear anywhere, it records natively and is free for those who already have the hardware. For those of us who use the physical device and also usually have meetings by video call, the integration of both sources in the same hub It’s really comfortable. What is uncomfortable is the question that appears here. With the Note Pro, the hardware justification was clear: it freed you from your phone, it had four high-quality MEMS microphones, and the 30-hour battery let you record everything without worrying. The NotePin S has only a fraction of that claimed battery, and its three-meter effective capture radius puts a real limit on it in large rooms. Although in a high school classroom, where I recorded the image above, it responded perfectly. In everyday contexts, both are sufficient. In the most demanding contexts where the Note Pro especially shined, the NotePin S falters in comparison. What the NotePin S offers that the Note Pro can’t is that you can wear it, not just carry it around. And there is the basic question that must be answered before buying it: do I really need to wear my recorder, or is it enough for me to have it in my pocket or on the table? By separating its magnetic coupling, the charging connector is revealed. Image: Xataka. And so it is attached to the USB-C charging accessory. Image: Xataka. Here, separated from the clip that allows it to be put on the lapel. Image: Xataka. For a journalist doing interviews on the move, the … Read more

Chips connected by laser instead of cable. It seems like science fiction, but it aims to revolutionize data centers

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If you have ever mounted a PCSurely one of the points on which you have had to pay the most attention is the connections. Because understanding the power of the processor, the GPU or the speed of the RAM is “easy”, but the motherboard is what allows us to interconnect all these components with ‘highways’ in which the data speed can be maximum. In the data centers and serversthis is the same: the better the connections between chips and equipment, the lower latency, higher bandwidth and better performance. These connections are made physically, but there is a French startup that wants to change the rules of the game with NVIDIA. As? Connecting the chips by laser. Chips connected by laser and NVIDIA taking out the wallet Improving interconnection speed is no small feat or a whim. NVIDIA has begun manufacturing its next generation platform, the one named Vera Rubin. It is a system that can be combined with others to multiply benefits. That union, as we say, is physical, but there comes a point at which physics is no longer enough. When that arrives, NVIDIA wants to be ready and, a few days ago, Reuters reported on a $4 billion investment by NVIDIA in two companies that are aggressively researching new technologies to help increase that interconnection speed: Lumentum and Coherent. This is a rack and the nightmare of those of us who hate cables. Specifically, that of the Wikimedia Foundation. Well, imagine that a large part of those cables go outside because the systems are connected by electricity Another of the companies in which they have invested is Scintil Photonics. It is a French startup that this in the testing phase of a technology that, if the industry adopts it, will mark a before and after in this connection on a team scale. The LEAF Light Evaluation Kit is, as detailed, the first dense wavelength division multiplexing single chip to go from theory to practice. It’s like another language, I know, but it’s basically what we were talking about: an optical chip interconnection system instead of copper. And that is the main advantage. With copper reaching physical limits of speed and density, optics are emerging as a solution when connecting clusters of thousands of processors. Each chip has an optical system that is responsible for emitting and receiving light, and in that light goes the data that is currently traveling through cables. The one from the French company it is not the first chip based on photonic communication, but they claim that their technology reduces the energy necessary for them to work by 50%, as well as latency. Results? Well we’ll see. The startup’s CEO, Matt Crowley, has commented that he has “six or seven companies interested in implementing the technology by 2028,” but that due to confidentiality agreements, he cannot name names. The Scintil Photonics prototype The complication in this will be that they get supply of the photonics systems, since the data center racks are built with the idea that they are scalables. That is, it is no longer just power, but how many tens of thousands of units you can interconnect, and a bottleneck in the manufacturing of any of the parties involved in optics would be equivalent to a lack of supply for their customers. At the moment, some prototypes have already been served to select companies for testing, but certainly, using light pulses instead of electrical signals is something that is very interesting in superclusters focused on huge data centers that can scale without the limitations of the physical connection. Images | Victorgrigas, M.I.T., GlobeNewswire In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

The war in Iran has reconfigured global airspace and its consequences are worrying

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Europe and Asia, continents united by land, are more separated than ever by the skies. Or, at least, it is more complicated than ever to travel between them. With the conflict in Ukraine and Iran active, airlines are either dealing with a bottleneck in their usual corridors or, on the contrary, are being forced to make long detours. And that has enormous implications. The latest. We have now been two weeks since the United States and Israel opened hostilities against Iran. The country’s response against the latter country and all those neighboring countries that host US bases caused chaos in air mobility in the area. Overnight, thousands of people saw how their flights departing or stopping in Dubai or Doha, two of the 10 largest airports in the world by passenger volumethey were cancelled. And they began to enter the hallways hundreds and thousands of other people looking for a quick exit of countries that were beginning to suffer bombings. Only in the first two days of conflict More than 5,000 operations have already been suspended with Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways some of the most affected companies. The consequences were immediate: passengers traveling 10 hours by car to neighboring countries to find free seats and tickets shot over the top. 10,000, 20,000 and up to 80,000 euros. Coping as they can. Little by little, the volume of flights at these airports has been increasing. After the first days of hostilities, Dubai is handling about 500 operations daily but this is much lower than the usual average of 1,200 operations. And airlines are in a similar situation. As stated in Business InsiderEmirates aspired to recover 100% of flights this Friday, March 13. Until the start of the conflict, they operated more than 500 flights daily and at the moment they have barely been exceeding 300. And in a worse situation are Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways, with a volume of operations that does not reach 100 daily flights when in the past they also exceeded 500. The passage between Iran and Russia has become a funnel a funnel. Those who do not have to make a stopover or are not destined for Middle Eastern countries are also not free of problems. With airspace closed over Iran, the passage between Europe and Asia has been reconfigured into a kind of funnel where Azerbaijan is key. And in the south the airlines have to deal with the conflict in the East, in the north they have to deal with the War in Ukraine. Most flights between Europe and Asia without stops in the Middle East are passing through the narrow passage between Türkiye, southern Russia and northern Iran. The other alternative is to divert flights through the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula. These narrow corridors represent a new obstacle for travel from Europe that had to pass through Russia before this country’s attacks on Ukraine. And this last country was chosen for a good part of the routes that connect with China or Japan. Now the airlines have two paths: go around to the south or go around far to the north. More, many more kilometers. Obviously, planes have to fly many more kilometers and burn much more kerosene. In The New York Times They give the example of the Nordic countries. Before 2022, flying from Helsinki to Tokyo was as easy as passing through Russia. Now flights have to circle the latter country from the north or south, spending time, fuel and, of course, money. The same has happened with Helsinki-Bangkok, which used Iran to take advantage of the forced detour to avoid passing through Russia. Now they are diverted through the funnel that is the narrow corridor between Russia and Iran. In BBC They already picked up on this problem a few days ago. With growing tension in the Middle East, some airlines had already chosen to reconfigure their flights through the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula before the first attacks. With greater air traffic in the area and more kilometers to travel, the experts consulted by the media point to something obvious: flights will be longer and the risks of delay greater. And the fuel through the clouds. These diversions also arrive when fuel for airplanes has skyrocketed. They collect in Argus that jet fuel is now double the price of oil before its refinement. The gap between both products is so high that American Airlines has lost 19% in stock market value so far this year. The reason: investors distrust the future of airlines. The fuel used by airplanes is a very delicate refined product whose storage costs are enormous so reserves are small. This causes its price to skyrocket with each new conflict and even its supply to be put at risk. When an unexpected situation involves a war conflict in a corridor through which 20% of oil and gas circulates around the world, the situation is much more delicate. and when 40% of aircraft fuel for Europe arrives through the Strait of Hormuz and it closes, we already know what to expect. From tourism to bankruptcy. The consequences of changes in routes and increases in fuel prices are very diverse. According to Deutsches Bankairlines are at risk of bankruptcy if fuel prices remain so high. They don’t talk just to talk. The last time there was such a big gap between the price of oil and jet fuel was in 2005 after the Katrina and Rita disasters. It was the trigger for the airlines Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines went bankrupt. But the change in routes is also key for the cities of the Gulf countries. Dubai or Doha have achieved attract Western tourists who spend a few days in its streets in a kind of gigantic terminal. Without intermediate stops on major trips between Europe and Asia, they risk losing their status as a recreational space between both continents, with tourists having a handful of days between two long trips. … Read more

What is Antigravity, how it works and what you can do with Google’s artificial intelligence IDE

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Let’s explain to you what is Antigravity and what you can do with this Google development tool. It is a popular developer environment powered by artificial intelligencewhich makes creating web projects as easy as possible. We are going to start the article by explaining to you in a simple way what it is. Antigravity. Then, we are going to tell you its main functions and what you will be able to do with it. Next, we will mention how you can use it, giving you the essential news, and we will end by talking about its price and availability. What is Antigravity Antigravity is an integrated development environment (IDE)one of those programs that developers use for programs. Come on, it is used to write code and create applications or web pages. The difference is that Antigravity is an IDE powered by artificial intelligence. This means you can delegate complex coding tasks to autonomous AI agents to write the bulk of the code and perform checks. Come on, instead of writing all the code by hand as in classic IDEs, simply you explain to the Antigravity assistant what you wantand then it will use artificial intelligence to plan it, schedule it, test it, and show you the final results for you to review. Just as there are other AI programming tools whose agents simply assist you while you write and you do the bulk of the work, Antigravity is the opposite. Here the burden of writing code falls on the AI, while you are just telling it the concept you want and reviewing everything. So, it is an IDE for whoever doesn’t know how to program can do it. It’s like one of those generative artificial intelligence that responds with text or creates images or videos of whatever you ask, but instead what it does is write code. There are other AI services like Claude that have very good capabilities in writing code. However, Antigravity is capable of not only generating the code, but also testing it, detect and correct errors that could have been generated. And as for the artificial intelligence to which it delegates, its agents use the Gemini, Claude and GPT models. As new versions are released, they are added, but today Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3 Flash, Claude Sonnet and Opus 4.6, and gpt-oss-120b are available. In essence, making a website with Antigravity can be a little more complicated than making it with Claude if you are an inexperienced user. But if you are a developer, you will have much more controland you will also be able to take advantage of AI to review other projects you have created. What you can do with Antigravity Antigravity is not simply a code editor, but goes much further. For a start. Let’s leave you a list with the main functions What does this tool have: Planning and autonomous execution of tasks. Antigravity agents can autonomously plan, execute, and verify complex tasks through the editor, terminal, and browser. You simply give it the instruction in natural language, which can range from creating a website to reviewing an existing one, and the agent will take care of the process, from planning to implementation. Management of multiple agents in parallel. In the Manager view, a developer can launch five different agents working on five different bugs simultaneously, effectively multiplying their productivity. Verifiable artifacts. Agents produce tangible deliverable artifacts such as task lists, implementation plans, screenshots, and browser recordings. This way, you can verify the logic that the agent is following, and leave comments on the artifact to make corrections or leave feedback without stopping their workflow. Browser control for automatic testing. Antigravity’s browser subagents can launch Chrome, interact with your application interface or website, and verify its operation automatically. Come on, in addition to creating a website you can have the AI ​​verify that everything works well. Two modes of work. Antigravity offers a Plan mode, which generates a detailed plan before acting on complex tasks, and a Fast mode, which executes instructions instantly, great for quick fixes. You can also choose the level of autonomy you give the agent. Compatibility with the existing ecosystem. Antigravity works on top of your existing toolchain: Git, language runtimes, package managers, CLIs, and browsers, so you can open the same repositories and run the same commands you already use. How Antigravity works The way Antigravity works is simple. The main screen is divided into two. On one side you will have the code, where you can open and see the content of the projects. And on the other side you will have the artificial intelligence agent, with a writing prompt where you will only have to describe the website you want. If you want to create a project from scratch, then go to the agents section and Describe the website or application you want to create. You’ll need to do this as completely and thoroughly as possible, talking about what you want it to be able to do, and describing the design you have in mind. Then, send it the prompt and Antigravity will first start thinking about how to do it, and then it will start writing the code, which you will see in the other part of the application. During the process, you will be able to see how the agent is thinking, and this will ask your permission to make changes or actions. You can also, when you launch Antigravity, open a project you already have to see its code. Then, in the agent section you can ask them to make the changes or checks you want. Price and availability You can use Antigravity with your free Google account. This means that you will be able to use it to create any website or application without problems. It is designed for occasional and not very demanding use. However, if you pay for a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription, you will have much broader limits if you are a professional developer … Read more

We thought that the great challenge of veganism was vitamin B12. A study suggests that social relationships are

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Whatever there is taken the step to veganismfor whatever reasons, knows that the most difficult thing is not to give up cheese or meat, but to face Christmas dinner with the family or the Sunday barbecue with friends, since food is an event with a great social component. In this way, when someone decides to radically change consumption habits in a predominantly omnivorous worldnot only changes the plate, but also social relations. Now science has determined the tactics these people develop in order to survive social frictions. The data. The study, published in September 2025is not limited to conducting a survey among vegan people to analyze the impact on their social relationships. What they did was exhaustive field work between 2017 and 2022, combining in-depth interviews, observation and netnography, which is the analysis of the behavior of online communities. where debates arise about it. The goal here was none other than to understand exactly where and how everyday interactions are “broken.” And above all how they tried to compensate in an almost innate way. Social fractures. The researchers here identified that tensions in a social relationship do not arise from a simple difference of opinion about the most ethical diet, but from what they have called “relational fractures”, which are divided into three very clear areas: Co-execution: The simple act of cooking with another person, such as a partner, or sharing a meal becomes logistically complex. What was once a fluid ritual now requires planning, separate pans, and constant negotiation to arrive at a common dish. Co-learning: Family traditions, like inheriting grandma’s secret meatball recipe, are short-circuited. This means that the exchange of culinary knowledge between omnivores and vegans often comes to a standstill. Activities that may be everyday activities, such as going shopping or choosing a restaurant with other people, become logistical minefields where one has to balance one’s ethical needs with the preferences of others to choose, for example, a restaurant with a menu that suits everyone. Survival kit. So, if relationships fracture, how do vegans avoid becoming isolated? The researchers here discovered that, to maintain social peace and navigate these turbulent waters, vegans develop four specific “relational competencies” that sometimes appear without them realizing it, which we see below. Decoding. This is the ability to “analyze,” meaning vegans learn to anticipate how others will react to their diet and evaluate whether the environment is safe, hostile, or simply curious. Depending on the impression you have, your behavior will adapt to the environment by being more or less open with the topic. Disengagement. The second pillar is to deliberately separate food from social interaction, as it means that one will eat their vegan plate while another eats animal products, prioritizing company and conversation over dietary friction. Chameleon effect. The third adaptation consists of integrating so as not to attract attention in the group. This may mean, for example, bringing food from home to a social gathering or ordering a basic salad at a steakhouse without comment, all to prevent veganism from becoming the central topic of conversation of the evening. Abandonment. The last adaptation that has been detected in some vegans is where they directly give up different shared plans, such as stopping going to certain restaurants or social events. Even, in extreme cases, a distancing has been detected in an interpersonal relationship, since it becomes toxic due to the tensions that are generated. It is not born from nothing. One of the researchers has been exploring “morality in markets” for years and this led her to talk about indigenous and animal consumption practices. In this way, veganism is something that has been scrutinized for a long time in different studiessince it is not just about choosing what to eat, but it is an ethical stance that the omnivorous environment often perceives as a challenge to its own social and cultural customs. The big conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that the transition to a plant-based diet does not only require learning to read nutritional labels or discovering new recipes, but also requires a profound social and emotional re-education.. The long-term success of a vegan lifestyle depends as much on resilience at the supermarket as it does diplomacy at the dining table. Images | Anna Pelzer Xataka | Protein powder has become the star accessory of modern wellness. Nutritionists have something to say

Mercadona’s future looks less like that of a supermarket and more like that of a takeaway restaurant

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Juan Roig, founder of Mercadona, is clear that in 2050 there will be no kitchens. Is an affirmation who, in addition to being daring, is, of course, interested. Especially taking into account that the Valencian company has managed to dominate the niche of distribution of prepared dishes with an iron fist, where its market share is 51.2%. The path is clear for Mercadona’s future: betting on saying goodbye to cooking at home. Store 9. Mercadona has launched its new logistics project with the name “Tienda 9”, which is the successor to the previous “Tienda 8”. Like Roig himself claimed“We have not been very original (with the name).” With an investment of 3.7 billion euros, the chain will transform its 1,600 centers in Spain and Portugal and will do so with a new criterion. After optimizing space and energy efficiency with the previous modelthe goal now is to completely redesign the user experience and internal workflow. Sort by temperature. The great revolution is not aesthetic, but structural. Mercadona abandons the “business” organization (greengrocer, butcher, etc.) to move to process management. In practice, this means that the supermarket will be sorted according to the storage temperature of the products. Thus, frozen vegetables will no longer be next to fresh fruits, but with the rest of the sub-zero products to optimize the cold chain and the speed of purchase. Goodbye, Mr. fruit seller. “Store 9” also marks the end of traditional counters. Here Mercadona is committed to total self-service: meats and fish They will be presented exclusively on trays. Handling, cutting and packaging are moved to central or internal workshopswhich will free up the space facing the public to convert it into more agile linear free-service areas. If you want to talk to the fruit seller or the butcher, forget it. Here everything is designed for minimal human interaction and of course, to optimize (further) margins. More efficient, no doubt, but also dangerously lonely. Six strategic areas. In this new design of each store there will be six different areas. The core will be refrigerated, frozen and trays, which will be next to each other to facilitate logistics. To this will be added areas of products at room temperature, a fruit and vegetable section that will gain square meters and of course, the big star: the prepared food area, which will no longer look like that, but something else. dark kitchenbut in pretty. The success of prepared dishes is so overwhelming at Mercadona that strengthening this section is a key component of this new “Store 9” logistics project. The supermarket looks less and less like a supermarket and more and more like a restaurant in which there are no tables, only take-out food. He controversial concept of ghost kitchens (dark kitchen) that experienced overwhelming success and an equally devastating fall is now recovering but in an “official” way and with the support of the chain that is converting it into an everyday occurrence. It is already known: Now we buy time, not food. Ready to eat. This strategy responds to a clear trend: people are excited about ready-to-eat meals. This section already has a turnover of more than 1,000 million euros and is growing at a rate of 20% annually. Mercadona wants to promote this section, so not only will expand the product rangebut will install more tables and chairs in the establishments. The “super” will come dangerously close to the traditional restaurant, thus competing with a sector that was already competitive. The revolution made a supermarket. The evolution of prepared meals at Mercadona is worthy of studying in MBAs. The chain conceived its table and chair areas as a service aimed at passing customers or workers from nearby offices. However, the aggressive pricing policy—bars and restaurants cannot compete—has transformed these corners into improvised soup kitchens and neighborhood meeting points. Depending on the location, there is a certain friction: what for some is a vital savings solution, for the customer looking for quick and aseptic purchases acts as a deterrent: the supermarket is no longer as efficient for them. More efficiency than ever. This transformation will also bring improvements in energy efficiency. According to Mercadona’s estimates, this strategy will allow an additional saving of 10% in energy and 40% in water compared to the previous model, which in fact It was already an example of efficiency. Each store will have a technical update of its machine room, although at the moment it does not seem that they are going to offer self-checkouts: Roig’s model continues to prioritize the passage through an attended checkout, maintaining – there – the human factor at the last point of contact of an increasingly automated store. Image | Flikr (Informative Board), Wikimedia Commons (Carlos) In Xataka | Mercadona and the rest of the supermarkets have realized something worrying: they spend a million dollars on printing paper

The US Navy already knows what is going to happen to the planet. The mission to open Hormuz is the closest thing to a suicide operation

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In the world there are only a dozen maritime passages capable of altering the global economy if they are blocked. Some are so narrow that, at certain points, they barely exceed 30 kilometers wide. However, millions of barrels of oil, huge ships of liquefied natural gas and a good part of the planet’s energy trade circulate through them every day. When one of those places goes into crisisthe impact it doesn’t take long to feel in markets, governments and homes around the world. And the Strait of Hormuz points to a unprecedented scenario. The impossible mission. Yes, the Strait of Hormuz has become the point most dangerous on the planet for global energy trade. Some 20 million barrels of oil daily (around 20% of global consumption) in addition to one fifth of liquefied natural gas that supplies numerous countries. The conflict with Iran has transformed that corridor into a war zone where attacks on oil tankers, drones, missiles and sabotage have paralyzed much of the traffic. But what is most revealing is not only the violence of the incidents, but Washington’s reaction: even the world’s largest naval power just recognized which is not prepared to escort oil tankers through the area. That delay is a clear sign of the magnitude of the problem, because if the US Navy needs weeks to organize convoys, and that is exactly the words they have usedthe implicit message for the markets is that the Gulf energy blockade may last much longer than many imagined. Convoys under fire. To understand it we must imagine the scenario. The idea of ​​accompanying oil tankers with warships seems, on paper, a direct solution. In practice, it is one of the riskiest missions that a modern navy can face. The convoys would need frigates and destroyers protecting the freighters while specialized units They search for mines and drones in an environment saturated with threats. The ships would be exposed to anti-ship missiles launched from mobile trucks off the Iranian coast, swarms of explosive speedboats, kamikaze drones and possible mines hidden in the strait. To completely eliminate these threats, some analysts they even propose something Washington would prefer to avoid: a ground operation to control the Iranian coast that dominates the sea passage. This scenario explains why military planners speak of a “very complicated” situation: reopening the strait does not depend only on naval superiority, but on neutralizing an entire ecosystem of asymmetric warfare. Iranian missile boat moments before being attacked The cheapest weapon to paralyze commerce. And among all the threats, one stands out for its effectiveness: naval mines. We are talking about simple, cheap and extremely disruptive weapons that can transform a maritime corridor in a death trap. Even a few mines in a narrow spot are enough to paralyze traffic, because shipping companies and their insurers simply refuse to take the risk. Iran has several types of these devices, from floating mines to models anchored to the seabed capable of detonating charges of more than one hundred kilos of explosives upon contact. Not only that. You can also display them in ways difficult to detect: from small boats camouflaged as fishing boats or by divers who attach them to the hull of the ships. History, in fact, has already demonstrated his powerbecause mines have damaged more American ships than any other weapon naval since World War II. Hence its true effect is not to sink ships, but to sow enough fear to block traffic. Map with the strategic location of the Strait of Hormuz The invisible lock. The paradox of this type of war is that it is not necessary to mine the entire strait to close it. In reality, it is enough the simple suspicion. The reason is simple: in such a narrow channel, the presence of a few mines requires inspection every meter of water with sonar, underwater drones and specialized ships. A slow and dangerous process, especially if the enemy continues to lay new mines or attack demining units. Plus: recent experience in the black sea has shown that even uncertainty about their presence can keep commercial ships away for months. And in the Persian Gulf the same thing happens: Thousands of ships wait for instructions while the risk of mines, missiles or drones turns each voyage into a gamble. Oil as a geopolitical hostage. There is no doubt, all this gives Iran a strategic power of large dimensions. Before the conflict, about a fifth of the world’s oil passed through Hormuz daily. With this altered flow, energy prices react immediately and governments release strategic reserves to contain the impact. The strait thus becomes a colossal geopolitical lever: Even if the war were to end soon, something that is currently a utopia, an Iranian regime still capable of launching drones, missiles or mines could keep threatening maritime traffic when it suits you. That means oil and gas can stay hostage of Gulf stability for a long time, something that worries both the markets and Washington’s regional allies. There is no easy way out. Under this scenario, the dilemma For the United States it is evident. Stopping the war too soon could leave intact Iran’s ability to blockade the strait and put pressure on global energy markets. Continuing it could require a major climbincluding land operations or prolonged naval campaigns to ensure the security of the sea passage. Meanwhile, the conflict has already demonstrated something truly disturbing: even in the face of a military power like the United States, Iran retains enough tools to disrupt the global energy system. That is why the real alarm signal is not only the closure of Hormuz, but the realization that opening it may be much more difficult (and expensive) than many thought at the beginning of the war. Image | US NAVY, Oils & Fats international In Xataka | China has just found a hole in the US’s quietest weapon: an algorithm has hacked its B-2s in Iran In Xataka | The great paradox of war: the … Read more

mobile phones, headphones, eReader and more with discounts of up to 46%

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There is less left for Amazon to finalize its Spring Sale Festivalan interesting campaign in which we have seen quite a few discounts. If you are looking for a good mobile phone, you want to retire the headphones that have accompanied you for so long or you have decided to read more, stay because there is a lot to tell. TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra by 479 eurosa mobile phone with a very particular screen that has electronic ink mode. AirPods 4 by 109 eurosgood Apple headphones that have rarely dropped so much in price. Kindle Paperwhite by 129 eurosone of the e-book readers with the best quality-price ratio. Google Pixel 10 by 589 eurosGoogle’s mobile phone with a more reasonable price. Fire TV Stick 4K Plus by 37.99 eurosan ideal device for watching multimedia content on almost any TV. TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra He TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra It is a mobile phone that incorporates a very particular screen, since it has a e-ink mode. What is this? Basically it is a mode that allows you to have a normal screen, the kind we see on mobile phones, and another that allows you to have a screen like that of e-book readers. This, of course, affects autonomy, which will be greater if we have the mode selected. This screen is also quite large, reaching a 7.2 inch diagonal. It comes with 512 GB of internal storage and its rear camera module offers good results through its three sensors. Its price on Amazon has now dropped to 479 euros. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links AirPods 4 If you are looking for headphones, be careful because the AirPods 4 from Apple right now they find themselves with one of the best prices that we have seen to date: for 109 euros without active noise cancellation or 149 euros with her. They are compatible with wireless charging, offer excellent audio quality and offer good autonomy. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Kindle Paperwhite If you want to immerse yourself in a sea of ​​novels and are looking for an e-book reader, Amazon has lowered the price of the Kindle Paperwhite until the 129 euros (24% discount). Incorporates a good seven inch screencomes with 16 GB to store many books and its autonomy is up to 12 weeks. In addition, it resists water, making it a perfect companion for summer. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Pixel 10 If you are not convinced by the TCL mobile and are looking for a more traditional model, but one that is high-end, the Google Pixel 10 Right now it is on sale for 589 euros instead of the 899 euros that it cost at launch. The screen and its speaker system are ideal for watching multimedia content and Their cameras are a real delight for everyday use.. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Fire TV Stick 4K Plus Amazon has once again lowered the price of many of its devices (we have already seen it with the Kindle), so it is not surprising that among them we find the Fire TV Stick 4K Plusthe model that currently has the best quality-price ratio. It is found by 37.99 euros with the 46% discount. This device can be connected to a smart TV or an old one as long as it has an HDMI port. It supports 4K resolution and is compatible with both Dolby Vision as with Dolby Atmos. In addition, it comes with the Alexa voice assistant and a remote control with direct access to some apps like Netflix. 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 | TCL, Apple, Amazon, Google In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2026), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best electronic book readers (e-readers) in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and five recommended models

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