usatoday24

she is becoming more and more french

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One of the star dishes of Spanish gastronomy is in danger. The agricultural organization COAG (Coordinator of Farmers and Ranchers Organizations) has revealed that Spanish farmers that produce the potato with which tortillas are made are on the verge of ruin. Meanwhile, Horeca channel operators — who supply hotels, bars and restaurants — are selling low-quality “old” French potatoes and destroying prices. Prices on the floor. Large businesses that supply the large-scale hospitality industry are buying preservation french potatostored since the 2025 harvest, at between 15 and 20 cents per kilo. That potato enters Spain and causes the price of the entire market to fall, including that of Spanish potatoes recently harvested in areas such as Campo de Cartagena (Murcia) or in Andalusia. Both regions should be experiencing their moment of greatest demand, and instead they are seeing how the potatoes they produce have no outlet. We were few… Producers in Murcia and Andalusia charge between 25 and 30 cents per kilo, while their production costs exceed 35-40 cents. There, agricultural diesel (50% more expensive than a year ago) and nitrogen fertilizers, which are also 40% more expensive than a year ago, have a clear impact. due to the impact of the war in Iran. The result is losses that range between 100 and 150 euros for each ton sold. That tortilla is probably not very Spanish. According to Alberto Duque, head of the sector at COAG, what neither the tourist nor the hotelier themselves know is that the omelette they are eating or serving today has a high probability of having been cooked with preserved French potatoes. This potato can be identified relatively easily because it darkens when cooked and falls apart when fried. A decade with this trend. The phenomenon is not specific to this summer: French potato imports have grown by 33% in ten years, from 708,000 tons in 2016 to 941,000 in 2025, with a jump of 23.5% only between 2023 and 2024. Today, almost three out of every four kilos of imported potato in Spain (73.7%) come from France. What COAG asks for. The agricultural organization requires large distribution chains and Horeca operators to give priority to new Spanish potatoes in their production and distribution chains during the summer season. In addition, they ask that the origin and condition of the product (new or preserved potato) be clearly labeled, and that the Ministry of Agriculture strengthen control of the Food Chain Law to guarantee prices above the real costs of production. Source: COAG Many kilometers traveled. Compared to the 1,500 or 2,000 km that a French potato travels to reach the point of sale – more than 5,000 in the case of Egyptian potatoes – the Andalusian potato travels on average just 50 km before being handled. The Sevillian company Patatas Arrebola fencing that argument in Cinco Días and defended its new brand “Sabor del sur” to identify the 100% Andalusian potato compared to the French conservation potato that is flooding the market. Spanish tourist boom, Spanish potato debacle. He traditional tourist success of our country in summer should be great news for the Spanish countryside, but it is becoming the opposite. The more demand for tortillas there is in bars and restaurants, the more profits are obtained by those who are satisfying that demand with cheap potatoes from abroad. That leaves the local product out of a market that in theory should be much more its own due to season and proximity. Xataka | Mercadona and María Pombo want to turn potato omelette into the “Spanish pizza.” We are not sure if it is a good idea

“My urine spills everywhere.” How a viral phrase has changed the life of the man with the smallest penis in the world

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In 2014, a team of South African surgeons achieved the first penis transplant with history success. That intervention marked a before and after in the reconstructive medicine and recalled the extent to which problems related to this organ can affect much more than a patient’s sexual life. The viral that changed the conversation. “My urine spills everywhere.” That was the descriptive phrase with which Michael Phillips has ended up getting thousands of people to stop seeing his case as a simple Internet curiosity and begin to understand the medical problem behind a micropenis. In fact, what seemed like another statement destined to go viral hid a much deeper reality. less striking: that of the difficulties in doing something as everyday as urinating, a practically impossible sex life and a profound psychological impact. The challenge that went around the world. I counted the weekend Guardian that Phillips rose to fame after publicly challenge anyone to prove that he didn’t have “the smallest penis in the world.” That provocation quickly attracted the attention of media outlets around the world and generated an enormous debate on social networks. However, Phillips always insisted that his goal was not to gain notoriety, far from it, but to make visible an extremely rare medical condition and the consequences it has for those who suffer from it. Behind the size there was a medical problem. Because Phillips’ diagnosis does not respond to a subjective perception, but to a micropenis clinically diagnosed as such. As explainedeven when erect his member barely reaches 0.97 centimeters in length, very much below the medical threshold used to define this condition. That situation, accountaffects such basic aspects as going to the bathroom to urinate or having penetrative sexual relations, two problems that marked a good part of his adult life. The surprise. Be that as it may, the public exhibition has ended up causing an effect that not even he himself expected. After launching a financing campaign collectively to finance an intervention aimed at partially improving their quality of life, donations began to multiply. “I never thought anyone would care to help,” Phillips acknowledged.which ended up raising nearly $13,000 thanks to more than 250 people and confessed to feeling “really grateful and surprised” by the support received. Virality changing destiny. The impact was so great that even a well-known Beverly Hills plastic surgeon publicly offered to operate on him. for free. Finally, Phillips decided to undergo the intervention at a center closer to his home, where he hopes to increase the thickness of his penis to alleviate, at least in part, the functional problems derived from his condition. The procedure will not resolve all your limitations, but it does aim to improve everyday aspects that affect your quality of life. From stigma to vindication. The case has also brought to light the stigma surrounding to the micropenis. Phillips has acknowledged that his diagnosis practically ended his love life and that he even had to prove to a British television program that he really suffered from this condition before being interviewed. He has also endured ridicule and doubts about the veracity of his story, although he has turned that exhibition in a tool to demand that the micropenis stop being treated as a simple reason for jokes or ridicule. It started with morbidity, it ended with health. If you also want, the story of the American Michael Phillips went viral because it revolved around a striking figure and a diagnosis that was almost impossible to verify. However, the story itself ended up moving towards another terrain much more relevant. Curiously, the phrases that they generated more impact They were not those related to size, but those that described how a medical condition could turn such normal actions as going to the bathroom or having an intimate relationship into a daily problem. And it was precisely those confessions that ended up changing his life. Image | YouTube, Wikimedia In Xataka | Science has been measuring whether size matters for years. A study with 3D simulation has the most complete answer In Xataka | Millions of men wake up every morning with an erection. This is excellent news for them.

This is Gotion’s plan to turn Valladolid into the battery hub in Europe

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The Ministry of Industry and Tourism gave the green light a few days ago to the million-dollar aid that will allow the Chinese company Gotion High-Tech to build its first battery “gigafactory” outside of Asia in Valladolid. The resolution of the State Society for Industrial Promotion and Business Development (Sepides) confirmed a subsidy of 138 million euros for a project that mobilizes nearly 950 million and that aspires to turn the city into a reference center for the electric vehicle industry. What has happened? The aid is part of the fifth PERTE of the Electric and Connected Vehicle (PERTE VEC V) and gives definitive shape to a preliminary concession that was advanced last May. The idea is that the money will be distributed between two different plants: one dedicated to the recycling of batteries and recovery of critical materials (known as “black mass”), which will receive 82.3 million euros, and another destined to the manufacture of cathodes, which will receive 55.9 million. So confirmed it the Minister of Industry himself, Jordi Hereu. Components. The cathode is one of the parts that adds the most value to batteries. Around 60%, according to has explained the Ministry of Transport itself, and until now no factory in the European Union produced it. Setting up this plant in Valladolid means that Europe can stop depending exclusively on Asia for one of the most expensive and strategic components of the electric car (stop depending, halfway, since Gotion is still a Chinese manufacturer). It was not about “making batteries, which are already done in many places”, but about “opening a new path”, counted the Minister of Transportation, Óscar Puente, during the presentation of the project. How much money is at stake. The Ministry, through Sepides, estimates the budgets of the two plants at 411.5 and 539.1 million euros. The 138 million in public aid represent around 15% of the total investment in this first phase. Who is behind the project. Gotion High-Tech is a Chinese giant that covers the entire battery industrial chain, from the extraction and transformation of raw materials to final recycling, and that already maintains commercial relations with Volkswagen and its own factories in Germany and Slovakia. The facility in Valladolid will receive raw materials from Morocco and, according to has explained The company will also serve as a platform to export to Latin America. The project comes after the Slovak company Inobat, which at the time also obtained public aid to settle in Valladolid, gave up its plan without presenting the necessary guarantees. Employment. According to the data provided by Gotion itself, the construction of the two plants will provide work about 2,500 peoplewhile the operation of the factories, once up and running, will employ around 1,000 workers directly. Works. The project plans to begin building the first phase, the recycling plant, throughout 2027. The facilities will occupy some 700,000 hectares of industrial land, although Gotion’s own project is conditional on the construction of a macro solar plant that guarantees the energy self-sufficiency of the factories, which will require up to a thousand additional hectares of land. To build the factory they will also be required to modify the General Urban Planning Plan of Valladolid, a procedure that, according to picks up El Economistais expected to receive provisional approval on July 27, although the final decision corresponds to the Junta de Castilla y León. Administrations. The Valladolid City Council, governed by PP and Vox, has already signed a letter of intent to transfer the land that the company needs, with an initial surface of 70 hectares that can be expanded to 120 if the project grows, as shared by El Confidencial. The current mayor, Jesús Julio Carnero, assured maintain “permanent contact” with Chinese managers and has committed to facilitating the corresponding procedures. Impulse. Óscar Puente, mayor of Valladolid between 2015 and 2023 and today Minister of Transport, has been the one who has pushed this operation the most since he traveled to Slovakia in 2023 to negotiate with Inobat the first attempt to install a battery factory in the city. Puente has claimed on several occasions the strategic position of Valladolid, with its own airport, high-speed connection one hour from Madrid, proximity to Portugal and a consolidated industrial hub next to Palencia and Burgos. The minister has qualified the operation as the largest industrial investment in the city since the arrival of the Renault factory in 1953. And now what. Industry’s resolution clears up one of the main administrative obstacles, but there are still pending steps, including the presentation of guarantees, the definitive urban planning approval by the Government of Castilla y León and the start of works in 2027. In addition, Gotion proposes this first phase as the start of a much more ambitious plan, which could reach 5,000 million euros of total investment and adding up to eight plants in Valladolid, according to the company itself. Cover image | Ministry of Transport and DAZE In Xataka | From selling safes to manufacturing armored vehicles for NATO: this is how this company operates in a small town in Ciudad Real

A Galician gas station already knows the consequences of confusing diesel with gasoline

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Everything seemed to be going well. Well. Neither good nor bad. Everything seemed to be going normally. Until someone raised the alarm. The hose with 95 gasoline was not adding 95 gasoline. And what’s worse, it was not adding gasoline. The green hose was feeding gasoline cars with diesel. This is what happened a few days ago at the Repsol gas station in Ribadeo (Lugo). There, customers have spent almost five hours refueling diesel in their gasoline cars due to an error while filling the tanks. The company already assures that it will take care of all repairs. 270 minutes That is the time between 12:49 and 17:19. That is also the time that the Repsol gas station next to Ribadeo has been supplying diesel instead of gasoline to the cars that stopped at said station, as they have accepted in a statement published through the social networks of the Association of Industrial Traders, Services and Self-Employed (ACISA). It explains that the confusion comes from an error during filling the tanks with the tanker truck. This has meant that for four and a half hours, a mixture of gasoline and diesel has been served to those who wanted to refuel with 95 gasoline. Click on the image to go to the original post “We sincerely apologize to all those affected. We take responsibility for the breakdowns resulting from this incident,” they say in the statement while encouraging all those affected to stop the car as soon as possible, report to the insurance and get in touch through this website. At all gas stations, the diesel hose openings are wider than the gasoline ones, to avoid this mistake. Thus, unless you get stubborn and look for the most unexpected tricks to put diesel into a gasoline car (as happened to former soccer player Dani Güiza)it is very difficult to fall into this error. If it happens as in this Galician case, fill a tank with diesel It can cause serious damage to the car if we start driving it and don’t realize it until it stops completely. And diesel will cause the car’s power to drop and start to emit large amounts of smoke. After running in fits and starts, it will stop. This is a real problem because you have to empty and clean the tank but in the workshop they also have to do an arduous task to clean the spark plugs, the injectors and all the components through which the diesel has passed. When the amount of fuel refueled is low, we could continue driving, but it has to be very low. In this case, the diesel will be mixed in part with the gasoline, so if the tank has not been filled much, the situation may not have been very serious. On the other hand, those who have filled the tank will have to do a deep cleaning of all the components. Photo | Wassim Chouak and Google Maps In Xataka | We thought that gasoline cars were much cleaner than diesel cars. We did not have the effect of the sun

“Leaving the air conditioning on all night can cost around a euro in electricity”

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The torrid nights with thermometers that refuse to drop below 25 degrees are already here with us, with several heat waves that we have suffered in a chained way. At these moments you may think about the possibility of using the air conditioning at night, but the fear of the amount that will arrive on the electricity bill is always there. But the reality is that there are situations where this expense is not so exorbitant. Exorbitant consumption. Leaving the air on for eight hours of sleep can cost us around one euro. This is how Carlos Llull, air conditioning technician, explains it. who points out thatin an average scenario with modern equipment, the economic impact is much less than we usually imagine. Through a publication On his Instagram account, which has gone viral, he pointed out that “leaving the air conditioning on for 8 hours at night can cost around one euro in electricity.” And there are more voices. Beyond this phrase that can give us peace of mind in our pockets, Álex Bermúdez, energy expert, reduces This figure is even further stated by stating that, depending on the programmed degrees and the thermal characteristics of the room, the cost of an entire night can be barely around 0.45 euros. But with these gurus announcing this, the question is obvious: How is it possible if a domestic air conditioner usually has an installed power of between 1,000 and 2,000 W? And the answer is in the inverter systems of the most modern equipment. The mathematics. If we use logic, it is quite simple to calculate the consumption of an air conditioner, since it ‘simply’ multiplies the maximum power of the device by the eight hours that it can be kept on during the night. And this would only be correct if you literally lived in an oven without windows and the equipment had to work at its maximum constantly, something that does not happen in most cases. Modern inverter compressors do not work with an obsolete binary on/off system, but their motor is capable of self-regulation when starting at high power to reach the desired temperature, but once achieved, it modulates its work and drastically reduces the revolutions to simply maintain the environment. This means that, during most of the early morning hours, and helped by the fact that the outside temperature also drops, the equipment barely consumes a minimal fraction of its maximum capacity. It depends on several factors. Of course, that euro per night is not a guaranteed flat rate, but rather a measurement that depends on a delicate thermodynamic balance in your home. The first of them is the set temperature, since, as the IDAE runsthe ideal temperature in summer should be between 23 and 26 ºC. Each degree lowered will mean an increase of between 6 and 8% in energy consumption. Insulation is also essential, since a room with thermal leaks, as can occur with old windows, will lose cold quickly, forcing the compressor to exit its maintenance mode and work at higher power throughout the night. The energy rate. This is a fundamental factor, since the final cost of using the air at night will vary depending on whether the rate is in the regulated marketwhere early morning prices can be very low, or if you have a free market rate with an agreed kWh price. Optimize consumption. As the OCU points outit is important not to turn on the air at the minimum temperature to “cool quickly”, since it is inefficient, and that is why it should always be programmed from the beginning to the desired temperature. But in addition, you must take advantage of the ‘ECO’ or ‘Sleep’ mode that many air conditioners already include so that the temperature is gradually adjusted throughout the early morning. Images | Zulfugar Karimov In Xataka | What is energy efficiency and why is it a saving that matters more than ever?

The networks are filling up with maps that promise the end of the heat. One thing is what we would like and another, very different, is what we know

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There is always a time in the summer when people start to get tired of the heat. And one notices it because social networks begin to fill with weather maps saying “be careful, here comes the cool weather.” The difference this year is not only that this glut begins in July (we already have two possible thermal reliefs in the running!), but that many of the maps have AI behind them. First, the good news. We are, as it seemsin the middle of the second heat wave of 2026. The combo (a ridge over the peninsula, a DANA to the west and very dry air) is a classic. The result is also: up to 42 degrees in the Guadalquivir valley and peaks close to 44 in the south of Valencia. Tropical nights are for everyone. AEMET dates the end “probably on Wednesday the 8th, without ruling out Thursday the 9th”, with the declines becoming generalized from the southwest. And it warns of something important: there is a “high degree of uncertainty.” Uncertainty, yes; but after five days, less and less. And what about the end of the month? In addition to the nearest ‘relief’, there are other maps floating around. One of them is a pass of the European Center AIFSv2 which suggests that for the second fortnight all of Europe will experience a few days of general cold weather. Obviously, a single exit so far into the future does not say much. However, it is interesting because this model (based on AI) is only a couple of months old and is trying to ‘democratize’ long-term modeling. That doesn’t mean I’ve gotten it yet. The best example happened a couple of days ago. he ECMWF’s own weekly newsletter, July 3gave a warm anomaly in the following three weeks, with a possible third wave in Europe. Two days later, another pass from the same center announced the opposite. And it makes sense, because these are not failures: meteorology is something extremely complex and not all of our calculation capacity is capable of containing it within 15 days. Why should we care about all this? Because summer is looking bad. AEMET and ECMWF give a globally warm july and a summer with the warm tertile almost discounted. It is true that beating 2025 as the hottest summer in the series is unlikely, 20-25%; but it is not necessary to turn our days into a slow agony waiting for autumn. Forecasts taken out of context are going to be the order of the day. So… what can we expect? A respite at the end of the week and little else: although it seems that the omens of persistence of the ridges on the continent are fading, the heat is not going anywhere in the medium term. Image | meteologix In Xataka | While AEMET fears the second great heat wave of the year, meteorologists warn that “we have to prepare for harsher summers”

How to watch Spain – Portugal: date and time of the World Cup round of 16 match, and where you can watch it on any device

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Let’s explain to you How and where you can watch Spain’s match against Portugal. This is the round of 16 of the knockout round of the 2026 World Cup, an excellent Iberian duel from which only one will be able to advance to the quarterfinals. Let’s make the article simple. First we are going to tell you the date and time to which this match is played. And then, we will tell you what your options are to be able to watch it from any device. Date and time of Spain – Portugal Spain’s match against Portugal will take place this Monday, July 6 at the Dallas Stadium in Texas. It is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. in Spanish peninsular time8pm in the Canary Islands. Where to watch Spain – Portugal As we have explained to you when we told you where you can watch the 2026 World Cupsince it is a match for the Spanish National Team, you will be able watch it for free live through La1. This will allow you to see it both on DTT and on mobile phones or browsers through RTVE Play. Obviously, the party It will also be issued in the payment options that you could have to watch all the World Cup matches. It will be broadcast on DAZN and you will be able to watch it on any device if you have it contracted. You can also see it on the DAZN Mundial channel, available on both Movistar Plus and Orange TV. In Xataka Basics | Apps for football results: the best 14 applications to receive notifications and see match statistics

Telecinco hits rock bottom in the most spectacular way in a black summer, and signs the day with the lowest audience in its history

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Thursday, July 2, should have been just another day of the summer after-dinner meal. And like a domestic thriller TV movie, it became the worst in Telecinco’s 36-year history. The stars have aligned in the negative to reach the disastrous milestone, since not only is it the icing on the cake of a collapse in audiences that has been brewing for years, but the stratospheric audiences of the World Cup mean that, for the moment, Telecinco is going to have a very difficult time raising its head. Not six. Telecinco closed on July 2 with 5.97% screen share: the worst daily data in the chain since records exist. That same afternoon, Spain beat Austria 3-0 in the round of 32 of the World Cup 2026 and brought more than nine million viewers to La 1, which closed the day with 26.7% share and 63.7% during the match itself. The golden minute arrived at 10:51 p.m., with 10,447,000 people watching Spain advance to the round of 16. Not just football. As we said a few days ago, not only football is to blame: it is that Mediaset’s entire summer plan to recover audience is leaking: that same day ‘Love… or whatever arises!’ it signed a minimum with 5.1% and 439,000 viewers; ‘Summer moves’ fell to 5.8% and 431,000; and that collapse also dragged down ‘El Diario de Jorge’ (7.4%) and ‘Allá tú’ (7.6%). Even the prime time suffered the blow: the series ‘She, damn soul’ scored its minimum number of viewers in its third episode. However, ‘First Dates’ surpassed a repeat of ‘El Hormiguero’, which corroborates Carlos Sobera’s dating show as one of Mediaset’s most reliable assets. Because it was already coming off an ominous June: the month closed with an 8.3% share, the worst June in the history of the network and also the worst month in the regular season, even ahead of the previous negative record, 8.4% in December 2025. Not even heavyweights like the final of ‘Survivors’ or the outcome of ‘Temptation Island’ managed to reverse the figure. Downhill and without brakes. Since the chain he let Paolo Vasile go to reinvent himselfdid not find a substitute for the formats that sustained its leadership, such as ‘save me‘, which also went through its own via crucis. The 2025-2026 season closed with an 8.9% average quota, the worst in its history and the fifth consecutive record to set a new low. He contrast with La 1 It is especially striking: in five years, the public channel has gone from 8.8% to 12.1%, while Telecinco has done the opposite, from 13.1% to 8.9%. Great summer plan. ‘Love…or whatever comes up!’ It debuted on June 22 with 6.8% and 632,000 viewers. ‘The Peace Show’ started with 7.8% and 638,000. ‘Summer moves’ premiered with 7%. None of the three has exceeded 8% since then. Meanwhile, Antena 3 maintains the after-dinner atmosphere with ‘Sueños de libertad’ above 14% on average and La 1 exploits the World Cup to lead a month of June that had been belonging to Atresmedia for 22 months. The figures are unequivocal: it is not that people have stopped watching traditional television. It is a specific problem for Mediaset. The last puff. The fourth piece of the plan remains: ‘From Monday to Friday’, presented by Santi Acosta and Beatriz Archidona, two faces that already lead ‘From Friday’ in prime time on Fridays for three seasons. The program inherits the slot from ‘Jorge’s Diary’ from 6:15 p.m. adds a team of 16 collaborators in which faces from the extinct ‘Sálvame’ coexist (Lydia Lozano, Karmele Marchante, Rosa Benito, Terelu Campos, Antonio Rossi), which points to a timid attempt to recover what was the last great success of Mediaset’s afternoons. His only problem: he faces, in his debut, nothing less than an afternoon of warming up for a game in Spain. In Xataka | Telecinco has ‘El Rosco’ but does not have ‘Pasapalabra’. Antena 3 has ‘Pasapalabra’ but does not have ‘El Rosco’

Musk said. Two years later, it is very deep with its prototype of a mobile phone with AI

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In October 2024, Elon Musk appeared at an election rally in Pennsylvania, and there stated that “The idea of ​​making a mobile phone makes me want to die” because it was “a lot of work”, but then he added that “if we have to make a mobile phone, we will do it.” And that’s what seems to be happening. Prototype in progress. As indicated in The Wall Street JournalSpaceX has shown some investors a prototype shaped like a mobile phone, but designed to change the way we interact with AI. The design would be thinner than that of an iPhone, it would run on its own operating system and would integrate technology from xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company. The tycoon, yes, denied such rumors in Reuters a day later. The chip is made by Qualcomm. Although SpaceX controls a good part of its entire technological ecosystem, there will be necessary alliances here for a good set of components. The most important of course is the SoC, which according to WSJ will currently be manufactured by Qualcomm. They may release it, they may not.. The company has warned investors that the project is in a very early phase, which means that the design of some of the components will end up changing if the idea finally materializes. Of course: it is not even certain that the device will ever be manufactured. Starlink as a mobile operator. SpaceX indicated at the end of June that is preparing the launch of a mobile data service that would take advantage of its Starlink platform. This satellite internet service already allows internet access, for example in rural areas, but Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX, indicated to investors that it is considering launching a traditional mobile operator service. More and more rumors. Although Musk denied the news, rumors about a potential mobile device are accumulating. In February Reuters indicated that SpaceX was preparing “a mobile device connected to its Starlink satellite internet constellation that could compete with smartphones.” This mobile phone would not only take advantage of said service, but also xAI’s AI model, Grok, thus reinforcing the ecosystem proposed by Elon Musk with his companies. Apple has too much power. In WSJ they indicated that Musk had already considered creating his own smartphone in the past although he also showed his reluctance about it. The main reason for making your own mobile: become independent from an Apple which according to Musk has too tight control over third-party apps like X. Go for the super app. The underlying idea of ​​the device is not so much to have your own mobile phone as to have a way to boost a potential super app. This idea has been considered for a long time by Musk’s company, which here is trying to have an “application for everything” as is the case with WeChat or AliPay in China. The difference is the role of AI in this device, which would be central to the entire experience. SpaceX is not alone in the AI ​​hardware race. Attempts to propose alternatives to current mobile phones have been underway for some time, but for now this “gadget with AI” that manufacturers aspire to is still not working out. Both the Humane AI Pin like the Rabbit R1 They failed completely in the market, but now there are several companies with that ambition: Go with your glasses and OpenAI with its mysterious device in collaboration with Jony Ive They are two good examples. It remains to be seen what the result of these efforts is, because for now one thing is certain: the smartphone remains unrivaled. Image | Heisenberg Media In Xataka | Apple and OpenAI repeat the bet that sank Humane and Rabbit: screenless wearables in a world addicted to TikTok

“A sedentary lifestyle is an independent risk factor and it is not enough to ‘compensate’ for it with specific exercise”

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There are many people passing by much of her day glued to a chairin many cases because they are working, traveling by car or resting on the couch, with a sedentary lifestyle being a true routine in the lives of many people. Until now we knew that it was harmful, but now science has put exact numbers on how an uninterrupted sedentary lifestyle influences our health, and the most important thing is that it has been seen that it does not help to compensate for it. With a watch. A new study published in PLOS analyzed data from 91,292 people from the UK Bank, and unlike other epidemiological studies that rely on questionnaires filled out by the participants themselves, here they used accelerometry. That is, for years they have monitored the physical movement of all these people thanks to activity sensors on the wrist. After an average follow-up of 12.38 years, the researchers not only measured total inactivity time, but how it was distributed throughout the day. And that’s where the real enemy to our health comes in, which are blocks of uninterrupted time. You have to get up. The central finding of the study does not penalize the simple act of sitting so much, but rather doing it continuously. The researchers concluded that each additional hour of prolonged sedentary behavior, understood as periods of 30 minutes or more without getting up at any time, is associated with a 10% increase in the risk of cancer mortality. That is to say, spending long work days without moving at all is not free in the long term. The solution. Fortunately, the results also show that the human body is incredibly grateful when we break that stasis. Using statistical time substitution models, the study calculated what happens when we swap prolonged periods in the chair for different “doses” of daily physical activity. To give an example, replacing one hour a day of prolonged sedentary lifestyle with low-intensity activities such as walking at a normal pace or doing housework reduces the risk by 12%. But if we go further, changing just 30 minutes of uninterrupted sedentary lifestyle for moderate physical activity reduces the risk by 8%. The most important thing. The most efficient substitution has been found to require very little time, as swapping sedentary time for just five minutes a day of vigorous physical activity reduces the risk of cancer mortality by a staggering 22%. The golden rule. As is usual when analyzing medical literature, and as the authors and independent experts themselves emphasize, we must read the fine print. As it is an observational study, the data show a strong statistical association, but the design itself cannot demonstrate strict and absolute causality, leaving it exposed to certain biases, such as the UK Biobank volunteers usually having a healthier baseline profile than the population average. However, this research does not arrive in a vacuum since it is tremendously consistent with previous scientific evidence and gives robustness to what we already suspected. In 2022, a meta-analysis and umbrella review already warned about the strength of the relationship between a sedentary lifestyle and oncological risk. And at a closer level, a study by the Carlos III Health Institute in 2024 confirmed in the Spanish population that replacing just one hour a week of sitting time with physical activity managed to reduce general mortality. The experts. Nabil Djouder, head of the Group of Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer of the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in statement to SMC pointed out that this study “reinforces the idea that sedentary behavior is an independent risk factor and that it is not enough to ‘compensate’ for it with specific exercise.” Images | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | Spending hours sitting in front of the screen is not only destroying your body, it is also changing your personality

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