How Much Protein You Really Need per Day and What Science Says About Supplements to Reach Your Goals

In the sports world there is a great debate about how much protein should be consumed daily in order to have a good result in the gym and for the muscles to grow. But the truth is that sometimes the figures you hear about the doses you need to take are very high, and that is why it is best to go to the official source where they tell us the most appropriate doses for each person. We are not all the same. The biggest mistake when talking about protein is thinking that there is a universal figure, since recommendations vary drastically depending on whether you spend the day sitting in front of the computer or if you strength train four days a week. This is why authorities have historically established a minimum protein intake to avoid health problems, and not to optimize performance or body composition. The general population. Here the WHO it’s pretty clear pointing out that the minimum protein that should be taken is 0.75-0.8 grams per kilo of weight per day. But we talk about “minimum” and that means that it is not necessarily optimal, and that is why other guides raise this range to 0.8-1 grams per kilo of weight, emphasizing the need to include a source of protein in each meal. In athletes. Things change in this context, since the International Society of Sports Nutrition point Because, if you exercise, you should take between 1.4 and 2 grams of protein per kilo of weight per day, reaching peaks of 2.5 grams in very intense training phases. The supplementation. Achieving 2 grams of protein per kilo of weight can be a real logistical (and digestive) challenge based on chicken breast, eggs and legumes. But this is where the famous protein supplementation comes in, which should not be used as a magic remedy, but as a practical, safe and highly bioavailable tool for healthy people who They need extra protein. It is investigated. Here studies highlight that proteins derived from milk are the ones that offer the best results, although vegetable options such as those derived from soy are not far behind. The undisputed queen is wheywhose main advantage is its rapid absorption and high bioavailability, something that has been seen in clinical trials where greater development of strength and lean mass after exercise was evident. Another of the great supplements is casein, which is the slow-digesting protein, with an “anti-catabolic” effect that prevents prolonged muscle breakdown. In this way, experts point out that it is ideal to take it before sleeping to ensure a constant drip of amino acids during the night, which are nothing more than the bricks that will form the muscles. Images | Alex Saks In Xataka | When adding protein to everything is no longer a good idea: What science says about aging well

Toyota has created the city of the future and it is full of AI and cameras that protect you. It’s also a privacy nightmare

At the foot of Mount Fuji, Toyota he has been building a city for years entire designed from scratch to test their future inventions. It’s called Woven City, and it already has its first inhabitants. And although the city does not lack one bit of technology, living there also involves making certain concessions in terms of privacy. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Why does this exist? At CES 2020, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda advertisement that the company was going to build a laboratory city on the land of a former factory in Susono, in the Japanese prefecture of Shizuoka. The idea was not to create just another corporate campus, but to build a real urban environment where engineers, researchers and residents would coexist and test advanced mobility, robotics, artificial intelligence and sustainability technologies. The project, developed under the subsidiary Woven by Toyota, has cost about 10 billion dollars, according to they count from Ars Technica, and its first inhabitants arrived just a few months ago. In detail. Woven City has, at the moment, about 100 hand-selected residents, who they internally call Weavers. They are Toyota employees and people chosen for their technological profile. They live in Japandi-style apartments (fusion between Nordic and Japanese) equipped with domestic robotics and health monitoring systems. The city is powered by rooftop solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, and its streets are designed in three categories based on vehicle speed: expressways, personal mobility zones, and pedestrian-only areas. When completed, the total area will be about 294,000 square meters, although only about 10% of the planned space is operational right now. What is proven there. Residents act as beta testers for a diverse list of projects: from AI karaoke systems that choose songs based on mood to an air conditioning system capable of eliminating 95% of pollen from the environment, something relevant in a country where half of the population suffers from allergies. Delivery robots, tricycles or, as point the middle, the Guide Mobi, an autonomous vehicle that acts as a digital towboat to take cars out of the garage and take them to their owners without the driver having to move. According to they count From Ars Technica, 98% of residents have given permission for a robot with cameras to operate within their own homes. Here comes the problem. For all of this to work, Woven City is full of cameras. Many. According to the mediumyou could count up to eight cameras at a single intersection, and dozens more spread across the roofs of buildings, common spaces, and even the small cafeteria there. All that network of images feeds what Toyota calls the AI ​​Vision Engine, an artificial intelligence system designed to monitor, catalog and report on activity in the city. The system can identify people and follow them from camera to camera based on their clothing, without using facial recognition. They used it in a demo to detect potential thefts in a business. What Toyota says. The company says it has its own consent management system called Data Fabric, which allows residents to decide what data they share and what they don’t. “We allow Weavers to select what they want to share or not. Whether they don’t want to share anything or if they want to share everything is up to each individual,” explained John Absmeier, CTO of Woven City, told Ars Technica. The data, according to Toyota, is not sold to third parties. “At least for now,” they added in the media report. Between the lines. That 98% of the residents have accepted practically all the privacy conditions does not say as much about trust in Toyota as it does about the profile of the people who live there: they are selected technicians, who know perfectly well what they are agreeing to and who have come precisely to participate in the experiment. Kota Oishi, CEO of Woven City, recognized Japanese citizens, like Europeans, are especially sensitive to privacy and demand to know exactly what their data will be used for. The leap between this group of controlled volunteers and the implementation of similar technology in a real city with millions of ordinary people would be enormous, and questions about mass surveillance inevitable. The other big bet: a Own AI. While all this is happening on the streets, Toyota is working in parallel to not depend on the large technological giants in terms of artificial intelligence. Daisuke Toyoda, son of President Akio Toyoda and head of the Woven City project, counted on an interview in April to Automotive News that developing AI internally is key to protecting jobs and the company’s industrial knowledge. “If you only work with the biggest or best companies abroad, you run the risk of becoming a mere user,” he said. Toyota sees AI not as a tool to cut staff, but to digitize the knowledge of its best workers and raise the level of the rest. One of the most striking projects of this line is an AI clone of Akio Toyoda himself (even with his voice, his way of speaking and his philosophy) that is already used internally to train managers. And now what. Woven City is still in its infancy: only 10% built, 100 residents and many robots that “don’t do much yet,” according to counted the middle. The objective is reach 2,000 inhabitants when all phases are complete. Toyota does not expect it to be profitable in the short term; understands it as a long-term technological incubator to test its technology in more open, but controlled spaces. Cover image | toyota In Xataka | Chinese manufacturers no longer know what more innovations to incorporate into their cars, so they have added a toilet to one

how a “betrayal” ended up giving its name to the satellite

Despite the immense amount of information that exists denying it, they continue to sneak it in from time to time with the topic of colored moons. Just look at what happened last April with the famous pink moon. Many people looked at the sky again, hoping that our satellite would turn strawberry colored. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Now, we read everywhere that we will have a blue moon in May. This is a real term. The blue moon exists. But no, it’s not the color you’re imagining. When? The blue moon of May will be seen next day 31. Without a doubt, it will be a beautiful moment to look at the sky, but simply because a full moon is always a great spectacle. Not because it’s visibly special. Two in a month or four in a season. Actually, the term “blue moon” is used to talk about an extra moon. The Moon goes around the Earth in 29.5 days, so we normally have 12 full moons in a year. One every month. However, since it does not coincide exactly with the 30 or 31 days of the month (or less if it is February), it may happen that from time to time two full moons fall in the same month. That extra moon is what is known as a blue moon. On the other hand, the same thing happens with the seasons. There are usually three at each station. However, since the solar and lunar calendars do not coincide exactly, sometimes there can be four in the same season. The third of these moons is what is also known as the blue moon. It’s not blue. Curiously, the term “blue moon” comes from a poor translation from Old English. When speaking of stationary blue moons, the third full moon of a four-year season It was known as the “traitor moon.”. This is a deceptive moon, since it seems that the season is already ending, but no. There is still another full moon. In Old English the term “belewe” was used as “traitor”. However, this became “blue” as it spread from word to mouth and it began to be called a blue moon. It has nothing to do with its color. To the eye, a blue moon looks exactly like any other. When it is blue. The moon, full or not, can be seen in different colors depending on the presence of certain particles in the atmosphere. There are some that are capable of dispersing the redder lengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus filtering the blue light and causing the sky to be tinted with this tone. With others, just the opposite happens and the sky turns red. Generally, particles emitted by volcanoes erupt They are of the first type. That is why in 1883, during a Krakatoa eruptionmany witnesses began to say that the moon had turned blue. There, the term took on a new nuance. However, it is simply an exception. More common than it seems. Blue moons are actually quite common. It is estimated that between 1550 and 2650 there will be 408 seasonal blue moons and 456 monthly blue moons. Next year, without going any further, we will have another one, also in May, although this time it will be seasonal and will happen on the 20th. In short, don’t let them fool you with the color, but take advantage of the fact that this month you have two full moons and look up. There is no better way to decorate the sky than with a good full moon. Image | Contri from Yonezawa, Yamagata, Japan In Xataka | Light pollution is a growing problem. So researchers have put it on a map

If yours is on this list, you have a problem

We are entering a reality in which passwords are going to stop being important that they have now. However, until that happens, it doesn’t cost you anything to check the passwords you have set for critical services such as your bank app or your email account, among others. Millions of people around the world they continue betting on keys such as “1234”, “123456” and the like, which any attacker can exploit in less time than it takes to write them. Below these lines we have left you a list of the most frequent ones to encourage you to take a look at one of the pillars of our digital security. We remain the same. Every year, cybersecurity company reports like NordPasswhich analyzes real data leaks extracted from security breaches and repositories of the dark webpublish the list of the most used passwords. And every year, the result is the same: predictable number sequences and keyboard combinations so obvious that it seems we haven’t learned our lesson. Spain, without leaving the norm. If we filter the data by country, the list of most used passwords in Spain is not too surprising. According to NordPass‘admin’, ‘123456’ and ‘12345678’ are the three most used passwords in Spain. In the Visual Capitalist chart that we shared with you last year, one of the most used in our country is ‘Spain’, which yes, is somewhat more resistant, but it is another one that would take a hacker a few minutes to decipher and which is still a key that no one should use. In the NordPass report, it is curious that further down the list appear passwords like ‘Nacho2006’, ‘1234ivan’ or ‘Talocha1’, which are a little more resistant, but practically as simple and vulnerable. Do you have any of these fixed?. On a global scale, the NordPass report ranks ‘123456’ as the most used password on the planet, with more than 21 million recorded uses. It is closely followed by ‘admin’, and ‘12345678’ with more than 8 million uses. Rounding out the global top 10 are ‘password’, ‘Aa123456’, ‘1234567890’, ‘Pass@123’, and ‘admin123’. According to the Basque cybersecurity center ZIUR, which works for the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, the ten most popular passwords in the entire world fall in seconds. Security gaps. The National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) managed in 2025 a total of 122,223 cybersecurity incidents in Spain, which represents an increase of 26% compared to the previous year. Of those, nearly 46,000 were cases of online fraud, and phishing led that category with more than 25,000 cases. Why a weak password is so dangerous. The most common attacks require no ingenuity or effort. Brute force programs They try thousands of combinations per second in an automated way, always starting with the most common ones. If your password is on any list of common passwords (and there are some in the public domain), you are practically unprotected. “It is not necessary to change passwords periodically for no reason, but it is necessary to do so in case of any suspicion of compromise or after a security breach. A long and different password on each important site, saved in a manager and with double verification activated in the email and the bank, for example, protects an average user against the vast majority of common threats” counted María Penilla, director of ZIUR. What makes a password really secure. It’s not about arbitrary complexity, but about length and unpredictability. Our recommendation: that it be at least 12 characters, combining upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Keep in mind that a long, random phrase is harder to decipher than a short word with a number at the end. Length protects more than complexity. That you can do if your password is on the list. Three steps in order of urgency: change it now in all the services where you use it, starting with email and your bank app. Reusing the same key on multiple sites multiplies the risk, because if your data is stolen on one platform, attackers will try that same combination on all the others. Activate two-step verification (2FA) where possible. Is the most effective measure to block unauthorized access even when someone knows your password. Use a password manager. There is no human way to memorize dozens of long and different keys without help. From Xataka we have recommended a fewsuch as NordPass, 1Password, KeePass, Bitwarden and many others. Some are paid, others are free, and others are free on one device but charge if you want to use the app on multiple devices at the same time. Change your password when there are breaches. When you suspect that someone may know it, when the service where you use it suffers a security breach, or after a long time using it on sensitive sites, the best thing you can do is change it without detours. And if you want to check if your password has been compromised on any service, you can always use tools like HaveIBeenPwned and the like. Cover image | Sasun Bughdaryan In Xataka | The European Central Bank has taken a look at Mythos and made a decision: prepare for the worst-case scenario

In the war of humanoid robots, those from the United States dance and those from China work by the piece. It is not a technological issue

The United States and China are fighting a technological battle with two very clear strategies: one visible and the other invisible. The invisible is that of the artificial intelligence, the fight between models and the basic technological development. The visible one is the creation of data centersthe development of next generation networks and robotics. Because it is the robots that are at the center of that technological race between the two powersbut while one country shows them jumping, the other is making them work. The difference is not technology or money: it is state support. However, as with so many things, there is a trick to it. Priority. China has put robotics at the center of its technological development program for the coming years. The new Five-Year Plan, the roadmap in which the country points out the objectives that it will try to achieve over the next five years, robotics is in a privileged place next to the development of the chip ecosystem or the 6G networks. This is a state issue, a national priority that marks a deliberate shift from assembly line robotics, the ‘simple robots’ of traditional automation, to one with built-in artificial intelligence and a greater range of functions they can perform. Humanoid robotics is not new and, in fact, Boston Dynamics is the company that has been demonstrating its products for years. But while the demonstrations by American companies consisted of making their vehicles dance or do somersaults, humanoid robotsChina has been showing them at sporting events and in impressive showsbut it is also putting them in front of stores. to work. There are already stores in Beijing that are operated by humanoid robots. They are independent, serve users and do not need human supervision (unless they are like this japanese robot). They are also turning them into guides in museums and stores, but beyond that public-facing work, there are important groups that are incorporating humanoid robotics into their workforce. An example is CATL. The electric vehicle battery giant began deploy humanoid robots at its Zhengzhou plant. Their task is one considered high risk for human workers: connecting high-voltage battery plugs on an assembly line. The robots are made by a startup called Spirit AI and feature a vision-language-action AI model. According to the company, they are having 99% success in connections, they triple the work that a human can do and, obviously, they do not need breaks. But it is not only private companies that are deploying this technology. The State Electricity Grid Corporation has intended 6.8 billion yuan, about 1 billion euros, to acquire 8,500 robots with AI. The intention is to deploy them in 26 regions to inspect and maintain power lines. It has a trick. Returning to the comparison with the United States, there is something that stands out: the valuation of the companies. While Chinese powers like Linkerbot are valued at 6,000 million dollars, the American Figure is valued in 39,000 million. The key is that Figure has shipped far fewer units to the market, something largely dominated by Chinese companies. Analysts expect both countries to develop markets of similar size, but China currently leads by far in the early commercialization of humanoid robots. Now, not all the mountain is oregano and, in the last report of the International Federation of Robotics highlights that, although China is dominating the deployment of robots globally (humanoids and non-humanoids), the mass market will still take several years to arrive. According to that document, there are more than 150 humanoid robot developers currently operating in the Chinese market, a market that will represent in 2025 more than 85% of the 15,000 humanoid robot installations worldwide. USA represents 13%. However, what the IFR also says is that much of that deployment remains limited to demonstrations or pilot projects, not a replacement as such for the human workforce. That is to say, there are companies that are already using robots on a large scale (the examples of CATL and the State itself), but within the figures that are used to talk about this Chinese dominance also include those pilot programs or robots that are dedicated to playing sports and dancing, as in the United States. Need. In any case, there is something undeniable: China is betting very hard and very quickly on robotics, be it humanoid or that of the ‘robodogs’ that are already using in military forces or in divisions of firefighters. And the reason is that the country is facing a precipice: that of the demographic pyramid. The accelerated aging of its workforce, together with new generations that are not willing to work for a decent wage, are accelerating the implementation of robots to improve productivity and efficiency in various sectors. China is not the only one. Japan is also experiencing with robotics in day-to-day jobs because it faces the same problem of population aging. And Samsung, part of a South Korea that is also experiencing a demographic crisis, has already indicated that it has a great plan underway to automate its factories with humanoid robots controlled by a central AI. In Xataka | In China they are not satisfied with creating advanced robots: a company has developed a head that gestures like a human

The oldest train line in Spain is still running 180 years later. And it moves 40 million passengers

It is very likely that you have also done the exercise but I don’t know if the subject fascinates you as much as it does me. Have you ever thought about how far and how close we are from our great-grandparents and our great-great-grandparents? The City of Wonders by Eduardo Mendoza explains wonderfully how Barcelona became a technological centrifuge at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. When Onofre Bouvila arrives in Barcelona, ​​the city is very different from the one in front of him when the book ends. A little before what the book tells, Barcelona had already begun to assimilate some technological advances that would be difficult for the average citizen to conceive. One of them was the railway. In 1848, the first train line on the Peninsula was inaugurated in Barcelona.. It’s Barcelona-Mataró. 30 kilometers in half an hour And, indeed, the Barcelona-Mataró is not the first Spanish train line but it is the first on the Iberian Peninsula. Actually, the first train line in Spain is the one known as Havana-Güines Since on November 19, 1837, the first service between these two towns was launched. The objective was to transport the sugar and honey that was produced in the first of these towns from Güines to the port of Havana. However, the first train on the Iberian Peninsula I would have to wait another decade. It was not until October 28, 1848 when the first train from Barcelona left towards Mataró surrounded by the music of the Artillery Corps and the curious who came to Doctor Aiguader Avenue. They explain in The Vanguard that the commotion was considerable to the south of the Parque de la Ciudadela and next to what is now the Estación de Francia, because the atmosphere vibrated with the excitement of witnessing a historical event in our country. The train had 24 cars and had capacity for 900 people. They had almost 30 kilometers ahead of them, which when the service was transformed into a regular line could be covered in 35 minutes without stops and an hour of travel if it stopped at intermediate stops, leaving far behind the five or six hours that had to be spent if traveling by stagecoach. The smoke, coal and soot did not deter those who, according to the Catalan newspaper, sneaked onto the train to be part of that first cap journey. Before, a few lucky They had already had the opportunity to travel between the two cities by train. And a few weeks before the big day, two rehearsals were carried out to check that everything was perfect and worked as it should. It was the result of the work of Miguel Biada. Miguel Biada i Buñol He was a merchant mariner who became a promoter of the first train line on peninsular soil. Although he was born in Mataró, he earned his living as a merchant in the Caribbean where, already in Havana, he had been part of the group of businessmen who promoted and carried out the first Spanish train line, the aforementioned Havana-Güines. Back in Spain, the businessman pushed to push ahead with that first train line that, according to some researchwas projected on the international gauge. These sources suggest that Madrid was required to opt for what It would later be known as Ancho Ibérico. A decision that condemned Spain to be isolated from the European railway network and that It still has its consequences today.. Finally, as we said, the first train line in mainland Spain started in 1848 and became a complete success. In the first year, 675,828 passengers boarded the train among whom, unfortunately, was not its promoter who had died that same year in April. Nor did the five people who, they say, have any good luck. The Vanguardwere run over and killed that first year. These deaths did not put a stop to the expansion plans. And the railway had come to stay in the Iberian Peninsula. It did so decades behind other European countries, but the expansion was so rapid that In 1866 Spain had already accumulated more than 5,000 kilometers of roads. Today, the Barcelona-Mataró has extended to the Massanet-Massanas station and is more than 70 kilometers long. Obviously, it is the first Rodalies line in Barcelona, ​​the one known as R1 that today starts from Molins de Rei and moves almost 40 million passengers a year. Photo | Illustration and photography collected on Wikimedia In Xataka | The Madrid Cercanías have become a nest of problems and delays: their solution is new “megatrains”

AI promised to decentralize knowledge. It’s doing exactly the opposite.

The entire AI debate revolves around the same thing: employment, deepfakes, copyright, automation. They are reasonable questions. But there is one that matters on a higher level: who controls what the AI ​​considers to be the truth? Because AI, which seemed like the great decentralizer, is actually the most centralizing technology since the printing press. The backdrop. When the printing press arrived, Protestant reformers saw it as the end of the papal monopoly on knowledge: if anyone could read the Bible, the pope lost his authority. And they were partly right. But the printing press also standardized English as the dominant language, liquidated regional dialects and, in the process, made the modern State possible: without cheap and reproducible text there are no uniform laws or large-scale tax collection. What seemed like a liberation was also a centralization. Only it took us two centuries to realize it. Between the lines. With AI the process goes much faster. When Google shows a response from Gemini in AI Overviewshalf of the users it doesn’t click on anything anymore and 26% close the search directly. Searches without clicks have gone from 54% to 72%. The open web, with all its diversity and chaos, is losing users to a single synthesized answer, such as journalist Jerusalem Demsas has analyzed in The Argument. And that response is not neutral. The LLMs They train mainly with large Anglophone newspapers, Wikipedia and academic texts. Local or minority sources hardly exist in the corpus. And during fine-tuning the models are calibrated to align with expert consensus and avoid awkward positions. It is not a mirror of human diversity but a photo of what appears at the center of it. Yes, but. It can be argued that users can ask the AI ​​to defend any position and that diversity is in use if not in production. It is an argument that has some reason. But the printing press also produced very varied content, what was centralized was who set the standards. Here the standards are set by a corpus Made in Silicon Valley for Western chatbots. The case of Grok It is quite illustrative. When Musk tried to move the model away from the progressive consensus, the system began generating anti-Semitic content within days. He had to turn back. The values ​​of an LLM are not in a superficial layer that can be retouched, they are stuck in the corpus from the beginning. The big question. ChatGPT is getting closer to the billion weekly users. Elite models are developed by a few companies: OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, mainly. We can add xAI. What comes next comes from China: DeepSeek, Moonshot, Alibaba… The researchers of these elite models, to a large extent, have studied in the same places, have worked in the same offices and share, in general terms, the same cultural references. The risk of this decentralization is not that AI lies more than Google. The risk is that when AI makes mistakes, it does so towards the center, not towards conspiracism. The risk is that this center is being set, without anyone having decided, by a few people in San Francisco. In Xataka | As far as we know, the agency that supervises AI in Spain is not supervising anything. What it does have is an Ideas Laboratory Featured image | Xataka

You can still get it for less than 1.80 euros per month

If we take a look at the list of best vpnwe have a good bouquet of options. How can we choose just one? If what you are looking for is a VPN that you can install on all your devices and that also be very cheapthen maybe the right one for you is Surfshark: it’s on sale right now and it’s only 1.78 euros. Of course, only until next May 11. Surfshark Starter Subscription – monthly The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A promo that only has a couple of days left Yeah, There are VPNs that are totally free. These, for a specific moment when we have no choice, can save us from a pinch. The problem with these is twofold: They are not as safe as they promise to be. and, furthermore, they tend to make us browse the Internet slowly. All this is eliminated from the equation by betting on a good VPN and that’s just where Surfshark comes in. This VPN stands out, as we have said above, because can be installed on all your devices with a single account. This way, you can carry this tool on your cell phone, tablet or cell phone and use it without having to do anything strange. In addition, its application is very simple and, as Surfshark offers more than 4,500 servers, we will always have connection options. Let’s see how the Surfshark promo works. As we explained above, right now their cheapest plan (which includes VPN and a tool called ‘Alternative ID’) is priced at 1.78 euros if we bet on his two-year plan. If we do a quick calculation, that means that it will cost us a total of 48.06 euros. Besides, Surfshark gives us three extra monthsso we will have 27 months of VPN at a very attractive price. What if you are looking for a little more security in your equipment? Then, you might be interested in making the jump to this VPN’s next plan, called Surfshark One. This, in addition to a VPN, includes an antivirus, an ad blocker and even a system that notifies you if your data has been leaked on the Internet. And its price is not much higher: it costs 2.08 euros per month in its two-year modality (so we will pay 56.16 euros in total for 27 months). And to finish, it remains Surfshark One+. It is an improved version of the previous one that, in addition to everything it includes, comes with a tool called ‘Incogni’ that allows us to delete our data from different databases. Its price is 4.18 euros per month, so in total it would be 112.86 euros in the two-year modality (which also includes 3 extra months). 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 | surfshark In Xataka | Why it is dangerous to connect to public Wi-Fi and what you should do to protect yourself In Xataka | Best VPNs 2026: guide with the 17 best services to protect your online privacy

It’s bad news for Google

If the question is which AI makes better images, the general answer would be Google’s Nano Banana 2. And if we talk about preparing reports rigorously, we would probably say that Claude is the one who takes the lead. But in the AI ​​race, just as important as being the best is appearing to be the best. And above all, make money with your model. And if the arrival of artificial intelligence to the labor market has felt like an earthquake in the shape of more or less related layoffs, barriers to entry to junior profiles and have to work more Against all odds, the reality is that in recent months the scenario of which AI is the favorite of companies has taken a turn. Visual Capitalist has published a graph that monitors month by month from January 2023 to March 2026 what percentage of US companies pay for each provider’s models. To prepare it, they used anonymized spending data from more than 50,000 companies on the platform. ramptaking only paid subscriptions, so free use is left out. The result is a clear picture of consolidation: the market is shrinking towards very few players at breakneck speed. The graph marks a clear winner from the start: OpenAI is the most widespread payment AI provider among US companies, reaching a share of 35.2% in March of this year. Just behind is Anthropic with a share of 30.6%. You have to look down a lot to find the others: Google, xAI and the rest of the providers are below 5%. But the most important thing when looking at the photo is not who the leader is but the trend: Anthropic’s is a meteoric rise. What AI model are companies paying for? The market closes and It only has room for two: OpenAI and Anthropic together account for nearly 66% of the AI ​​business payment market in the United States, meaning that two out of every three dollars that companies spend on AI models go to these two companies. The rest share the crumbs. This type of concentration is the fish that bites its tail: leading companies have more customers, more usage data and more resources to improve their products, so their pursuers have it increasingly difficult, although it is true that Google has muscle for a while. What AI models are companies paying for? Visual Capitalist with Ramp data January 2025 is a key date in the graph: OpenAI was present in 16.8% of companies and Anthropic barely had 4.1%, slightly below Google’s 4.2% share. In 14 months Anthropic has multiplied its presence sevenfold, while OpenAI has doubled it and Google has 4.3%. The takeoff coincides with the launch of Claude Code in February 2025, its scheduling assistant that became general availability in May of that year, and accelerates with the arrival of Cowork in January 2026, its workflow platform. That Claude be a rocket The graph has several explanations. Yes, it’s a good AI model, but Anthropic has been able to build concrete tools around that model that companies use every day and that make it difficult to switch vendors. According to Sacra estimatesas of October 2025, Anthropic had more than 300,000 business clients that represented approximately 80% of its revenue, which shows that those at Amodei were clear about their strategy from the beginning: their niche is the company and not so much the ordinary user. Google has been oscillating between 3 and 4.5% in business share for three years, a marginal advance compared to the budding duopoly and the investment made. Elon Musk’s xAI has gone from zero to 1.9% in March 2026, which means appearing on the map, but still very far from the competition. But the case of Google is the one that truly baffles: It has cutting-edge technology, one of the most powerful cloud infrastructures in the world and access to an amount of data like never before, but it doesn’t get companies to open their wallets. Everything indicates that the problem is in how it has packaged its products: dispersed among too many brands and platforms, which creates real confusion for the business customer. In Xataka | If the question is which of the big tech companies is winning the AI ​​race, the answer is: none In Xataka | The US’s problem in the AI ​​and humanoid race is not China: it is all of Asia and it is greatly disadvantaged Cover | Visual Capitalist

Spain still has dozens of reservoirs that cannot be used because literally no one has laid pipes

It was inaugurated in 2015, cost 57 million euros and has a capacity for 30 hm3 of water, but the Siles dam in Jaén hasn’t been used for a decade because no one has made the necessary pipelines to irrigate the Sierra del Segura. It is not an isolated case. An example. The Rules dam was inaugurated a little earlier: in 2004. At the end of 2025, while the province of Granada was at 29% of its capacity, the Vélez de Benaudalla reservoir was close to 70%. The secret is the same: going 20 years without pipes that allow us to use water. These are flagrant cases, but there are many more (and for the most varied reasons): Alcolea in Huelva, Mularroya in Zaragoza, Castrovido in Burgos… Is there anything more Spanish than making reservoirs and taking years—or decades—to build the pipelines that make them useful? The house on the roof. In a country like Spain, each useless cubic hectometer is not only de facto lost water, it is also a tremendous ecological damage inflicted on river channels for no reason. And, if that were not enough, it is economic nonsense. It makes no sense to mobilize all the resources necessary to launch a reservoir and then leave it forgotten. Above all, because (whether we like it or not) we live in an agricultural giant that needs water security that we cannot guarantee. The opportunity cost of delaying the pipelines necessary to launch these reservoirs impacts the economic and employment development of entire regions. A Spanish problem? To tell the truth, we cannot say that it is a purely Spanish problem either. Portugal, France or Italy have had similar problems. What happens in Spain is that there is an enormous fragmentation of powers that means that, when any problem appears, everything comes to a standstill. In our case, the central State designs and finances the main dams and key sections. However, it is the autonomous communities, the hydrographic confederations or the municipalities that they must run the secondary networks. And in determining what is the main or secondary tranche (and who should pay the bill) most problems arise. But not the only ones. And it is that, as the processes become eternallicenses expire, works are not awarded, litigation drags on, environmental requirements become stricter and solving the problem becomes impossible. In the end, the dams are what is striking (what is politically profitable). The “last mile” (that whole set of pumping stations, pipelines and treatment plants) is much less striking, as crucial as it is. When problems become entrenched, there are no good solutions and administrations prefer to put the issue aside rather than make decisions. The country of a thousand preys. Because yes, it is true: Spain has many damsbut dozens of them remain vats of water with no use. And as much as the causes are clear, it is still striking that not even water crises like those of recent years manage to solve this. Image | Red Zeppelin In Xataka | “In the next ten years, Spain and Latin America are going to suffer (a lot) with water,” Robert Glennon (University of Arizona) A version of this theme was published in 2025

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