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“The cat needs to explore the territory at its own pace, not to be taken wherever you want on a leash”

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If you have Instagram or TikTok and you like cats, I’ll bet you have had videos of them cats that leave the house tied with a leash and harness. Some even go on trips around the world, exploring forests, jumping, running and they even swimas if they were dogs. How is it possible? Is it advisable to walk the cat? To resolve these and other doubts we have spoken with Paula Vanascofeline therapist and president of the association ResCats Borges Blanques. The phenomenon of adventurous cats It began to become popular in the 2010s on Instagram. One of the first was Vladimirthat He was traveling with his owners in a motorhome throughout the United States. Also Skattya Maine Coon who traveled on a sailboat with his owner, who was completely deaf and relied on the feline to know when ships were approaching or when they were sending him messages. A search on TikTok returns hundreds of results. “Cat harness”, “Adventure Cat”, “Cat leash training”… Today, any of these searches on TikTok or Instagram return hundreds of results. Walking the cat is in fashionbut it’s not easy. Otherwise, many of the reels that appear would not be tutorials and tips for getting the cat used to it. And if there is one thing that anyone who has tried it knows, it is that, unlike dogs, cats They don’t like being tied up at all. Understanding the nature of cats Paula is part of the team feline therapy and in your day to day treats cases of cats with behavioral problemssome of them caused precisely by these walks. Their positioning is clear: it is not a good idea to put a leash on a cat. “Cats are hypersensitive animals. For them, a harness is stressful, which is why when you put it on them for the first time, many of them fall to the ground.” In addition, he adds that “for it to be safe it has to be very tight, which makes it even more annoying for the animal.” You have to understand that the nature of cats differs greatly from that of the dog. They are territorial animals and they feel safe within their territoryit doesn’t matter if that territory is the countryside or an apartment in the city. When they leave their comfort zone, they always do it very little by little: “The cat needs to explore the territory at its own pace, not for you to take it wherever you want on a leash.” On the other hand, walking a dog is more natural because its nature is to move in a pack. They are social animals and security is provided by their pack, so when we walk them they feel safe. Image: Amparo Babiloni, Xataka You’ve probably seen cats rubbing against the corners of furniture or other objects. It’s the way they have create a safe space. When exploring, cats rub different spots where they They leave pheromones that serve as olfactory references. “This is how they explore the territory feeling safe. If there is any scare they retreat, then they go out again… and so on until they have it under control.” “When we take the cat out of its territory, it adopts prey behavior. If there is a loud noise it will try to run and if it is tied it cannot do so” We must also not forget that, although cats are predators of small animals, they are also prey for larger ones. “When we take the cat out of its territory, it adopts prey behavior. If there is a loud noise it will try to run and if it is tied it cannot do so” says Paula. It’s not that the cats we see in Instagram videos are all stressed, some enjoy those outings, but according to Paula “they are the exception. They are cats that have learned that their environment is that way and they also have a very balanced character.” Getting them used to it from a young age is key because “cats don’t develop fear until they are 5 or 6 months old,” but he insists that this is no guarantee that they will enjoy it and it should never be forced. What we don’t see on Instagram If you are outside your territory and get scared, The cat’s instinct is to run and get to safetybut what happens if we have him tied up? Two things can happen: “he escapes from the harness or he attacks you.” In this video You can perfectly see how the cat tries to escape and, failing, ends up biting its owner. It is what is known as redirected aggressionan episode in which the cat has a very violent response, in this case for a clear reason: trying to escape and not being able to. If the cat tries to escape while tied, two things can happen: “it escapes from the harness or it attacks you” The other scenario is that he manages to get out of the harness and runs away (the most common, because we already know that cats are liquid). When being in a environment you don’t know“it has no visual or olfactory references and there are many cases of cats that end up getting lost.” If it is also in the city, the risk of being hit by a car or attacked by a dog is very high. There are people who choose carry the cat in a backpack-type carrier and walk it this way. Here it is much more difficult for the cat to escape, but Paula does not recommend it either: “I had a case of a cat that was taken out inside a backpack. The cat did not show stress at the time, but when it got home it became aggressive. They are very frustrated by being locked up.” Another problem is that many people who take their cats outside do not know how to understand the language of cats. “Just because a cat is still … Read more

Neither ketchup nor bread, we have been using the refrigerator incorrectly for years and the experts clarify what should really go in: “we can end up with mold”

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More than a century ago the first electric domestic refrigerator appeared, the Domelreand it cost about $900: more than many cars of the time. For years it was a luxury reserved for fewbut it ended up changing our relationship with food forever… and also creating a new obsession: putting everything inside “just in case.” Today, a century later, we continue to discover that perhaps we over-braked. The cold war of the kitchen. Few domestic discussions are as universal as deciding what goes in the fridge and what is left out. For years we have put almost anything cold by instinct, convinced that preserving meant refrigerating. But the experts they have been dismantling that logic piece by piece. Ketchup is not always urgent, nor does bread improve when enclosed in yogurt, nor does olive oil become purer by solidifying. The refrigerator is not a universal solution: improperly used it can accelerate the loss of flavor, alter textures or even promote problems such as mold. Red wine and the first great heresy. The most striking cultural change is possibly cold red wine. What for decades seemed outrageous is becoming a trend, driven by younger generations who no longer respect the old rule of serving it “at room temperature.” In that sense, wine expert Tom Gilbey summed it up in the Guardian: “We serve the wine too hot… it accentuates the alcohol and makes it taste like soup”. Their conclusion is simple: almost all wines improve somewhat colder than usual, especially light reds such as pinot noir or beaujolais. The cold does not kill the wine, it refines it, illuminates its fruit and makes its acidity more lively. Bread, the great victim of the refrigerator. Here comes one of the great domestic corrections. Many people put bread in the refrigerator (be careful, not in the freezer) thinking that it will last longer this way, but the real effect is different. Kate Hall, household food waste expert and author of The Full Freezer Methodmakes it clear: “It will take longer to get moldy, but it will get hard much sooner”. That is, you delay mold, but accelerate the aging of the bread. Cold moisture alters the starch and makes it leathery and dry. If it is for toast it can survive, but for sandwiches the recommendation is simple: outside or frozen. Foods that can end up with mold. Mold appears as one of the great ghosts of many foods, but not always where one expects. The nutritionist Dominic Ludwig warns that onions and garlic should not go into the refrigerator because “it is too humid and they can end up with mold.” Jams, although loaded with sugar, are also vulnerable once openeds because crumbs or traces of butter contaminate the interior. Even ground seeds and natural nut creams can oxidize and go rancid if not sealed and cooled properly. The problem is not just rotting: it is slowly degrading without us noticing. The refrigerator also destroys flavor. Plus: many foods do not spoil when cold, but they do lose their identity. Olive oil is one of them. Yacine Amor, founder of Artisan Olive Oil Companywarns that putting it in the refrigerator “it does not provide benefits and can reduce the flavor.” The tomatoes also suffer: the cold breaks its texture and flattens its aromatic profile. chocolate is even more delicate. The master chocolatier Paul Young Remember that “it absorbs flavors very easily” and that condensation generates a rough layer of sugar that ruins its surface. Sometimes the cold lasts, but it takes a toll. Coffee and the great lie of freshness. Few habits are as widespread and as poorly planned as keeping coffee in the refrigerator. For the specialist Hannah Whittonesthe reality is blunt: “It is a unanimous no.” Reasons? Coffee is extremely porous, absorbing odors and condensation from coming in and out of the cold destroys its compounds aromatics. Paradoxically and as many other foodsYes, it can go in the freezer, but only vacuum sealed and intended for long-term storage. In short, not a refrigerator, a freezer, perhaps. The forgotten ones in the refrigerator. The map does not end with bread, coffee or tomatoes. Also there are gray areas that experts refine. Butter can live outside as long as it maintains consistency and does not become liquid. Bananas tolerate some cold if they are overripe, even if the skin becomes ugly. Avocados should ripen outside because the cold slows down this process and only then should they be stored, and the honey should stay in the pantry to avoid crystallizing. As for apples, they last better and longer. coldalthough some prefer its flavor at room temperature. Potatoes continue to generate debate, but the practical recommendation is a cool, dark place away from onions, because ethylene accelerates sprouts. Even ketchup, one of the great symbols of this domestic war, enters into middle ground: due to its sugar and vinegar it can survive outside, but if it is not consumed frequently, experts advise cold to avoid degradation and the appearance of mold prematurely. The real rule that no one taught us. If you like, the final lesson is not so much to make a rigid list, but to understand what exactly does it do the cold It slows down bacteria, conserves nutrients and extends shelf lives, but it also changes structure, flavor and ripening. That is why citrus fruits, green leaves or open nuts appreciate this environment, while bread, tomatoes, green avocados or olive oil suffer from it. The great truth is uncomfortable: we have been using the refrigerator as a catch-all for years, and experts agree that a good part of our food did not need cold… or needed it in another way. Image | Monika Grabkowska – Darrien Staton, Alexander Ljung In Xataka | Scientists have put kombucha to the test against stress. and has lost In Xataka | Fernando Sáenz, one of the best ice cream makers in the world, puts the dots over the i’s, “Mercadona has modified the palate … Read more

we tend to turn left and we have no idea why

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It’s a matter of a moment. You’re walking down the sidewalk, thinking about your things, maybe you look at your phone, and suddenly there’s something in front of you. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bollard, a person, a kiosk or a baby stroller. You have to avoid it, you have to do it now. Now. And, probably, you are going to the left. And it seems that you decided it, but that decision was already made long before that walk down the street. A few days ago, a research team led by the University of Navarra has shown that, when wandering freely, pedestrians tend to turn counterclockwise and that this tendency is robust, cross-cultural, and of individual origin (not a pattern that emerges from group interaction). Turn left. The team demonstrated that the tendency to turn left occurred in 32 of the 33 experiments they carried out. The only exception was in a study in Japan where the result was 50 to 50. According to the authorsbias appears “almost immediately” in around 80% of people; when tested walking alone, 75% still deviate to the left. Furthermore, it is something individual: it does not matter whether the person walks alone or in the middle of a crowd. The bias appears exactly the same. And this is what’s interesting because, basically, it turns upside down what we think we know about “pedestrian dynamics.” And why is this happening? That’s the big question. Researchers rule out many things. It is not a product of manual laterality (being right or left-handed), foot laterality or ocular dominance. There are also no differences between sexes or between cultures. It doesn’t matter what the venue is like (whether it’s an open-air esplanade or a tiny patio full of walls), it doesn’t matter what avoidance maneuvers pedestrians use and, of course, it doesn’t matter what social norms they learn. Furthermore, if we ask pedestrians where they think they should move, most of them they say the opposite of what they end up doing. What researchers do not do is propose a closed mechanism to explain it. In other words, we don’t know. And what is it for? The most important implications for the design of spaces. As the authors explainairports, stations, museums, shopping centers or squares could be designed in favor of the counterclockwise bias. Obviously, not everyone always turns left. What the authors are saying is that, statistically, the probability of turning to the right is lower. The logic is simple: if we take that into account, the dynamics of public spaces can be more fluid. We already know that in evacuations or highly regulated environments, other mechanisms can override counterclockwise bias. But the idea is not that, it is to use the bias in favor. Image | Timon Studler In Xataka | There’s a reason why working out for an hour a day at the gym doesn’t give you results. And that reason is evolution

Second-hand homes were one of the last refuges on the market. Now they are becoming a luxury

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When the real estate market gets tight, prices skyrocket and the imbalance between supply and demand worsens, one thing happens: buyers lose the few refuges they had left. In Madrid for example the ‘plan B’ Looking for a house on the outskirts, in towns like Alcobendas, Móstoles or Getafe, is becoming less and less ‘plan B’ due to the rising cost of m2 throughout the community. Another refuge that offers less and less consolation is the second-hand market, where prices are already rising faster than in the newly built housing segment. In fact, used homes are getting more expensive. faster than what happened in 2007, before the bubble burst. What has happened? That the ‘used’ housing market is increasingly tense. It is something that anyone looking for a home has probably experienced firsthand, but it is much better understood when consulting the latest statistics of the INE. They show how in a bullish scenario, marked by the general rise of prices, second-hand housing is becoming more expensive at a faster rate than brand new properties. Annual IPV rate. Total housing, new and second-hand. Percentage. What does that mean? As a good graph says more than a long explanation, the phenomenon is better understood with the infographic above, work of the INE itself. In it we basically see the evolution throughout the last months of the House Price Index (IPV), an indicator that tells us about variations in the cost of houses. If we talk about the general residential market, the IPV grew by 12.9% during the first quarter of 2026, but things change when we take out the magnifying glass and look at the differences between new and used homes. In the first case, that of brand new homes, prices at the start of the year increased by 9.1% compared to the same period in 2025. If we talk about second-hand properties, that percentage is however much higher: 13.5%. Does that mean used apartments are more expensive than new ones? No. It shows us that its market is overheating at a faster rate. And that in turn gives us a clue about where the market is tense. Can the focus be expanded? Yes. The increase in the price of the second-hand market is also clearer when we compare quarters instead of years or if we take a map of Spain and look at the different communities. In fact, there is only one where the price of new homes has risen faster than that of used homes during the first quarter of the year: the Canary Islands. In the country’s other archipelago, the Balearic Islands, the ‘photo’ is diametrically opposite. There the price of new homes rose by 2.5%, used homes by 15%. Territory Second-hand IPV 1st Q 2007 (%) Second-hand IPV 1st Q 2026 (%) National 13.0 13.5 Andalusia 15.4 13.6 Aragon 9.9 16.4 Asturias 16.4 14.8 Balearics 13.9 15.0 Canary Islands 14.2 10.6 Cantabria 12.6 14.5 Castile and León 11.6 15.8 Castile-La Mancha 15.7 11.6 Catalonia 11.6 10.8 Valencian Community 15.1 14.9 Estremadura 13.4 12.4 Galicia 13.2 14.1 Community of Madrid 11.5 14.7 Murcia Region 15.1 16.3 Navarre 11.2 12.8 the Basque Country 12.7 11.4 Rioja 9.9 15.3 What was happening in 2007? When we talk about the residential market and price increases, it is inevitable to think about 2007 because at that time Spain was immersed in an upward spiral that led to the bursting of the bubble. one year later. At that time (first quarter of 2007) the general IPV was slightly higher than now (13.1% compared to the 12.9% with which 2026 started), but new and used housing became more expensive at almost the same speed. Not today. What’s more, used properties are appreciating faster than 19 years ago. It is an important observation because it reflects the reality they live almost a dozen of communities in Spain, in which used properties are becoming more expensive today than in the run-up to the brick 2008. It occurs in the Balearic Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Galicia, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra and La Rioja, although the clearest case is Aragon. There the IPV of used homes was 9.9% at the beginning of 2007. Now that indicator has shot up to 16.4%. Are there more sources? Yes. The Ministry of Housing provides another study on the subject that is interesting. Every so often the department headed by Isabel Rodríguez publishes a report on appraisals and, although it does not differentiate between new and second-hand houses, it does differ due to their age: it distinguishes between those on the free market that are less than five years old and those that are older than that age, so it is likely that they have had several owners. This classification gives a very similar reading. During the first quarter of 2026, the appraised value of homes less than five years old (completed in 2021 at the latest) stood at €2,685.2 per m2, 12.8% more than during the same period in 2025. Older homes were appraised at €2,303.8/m2, but their rate of increase was also higher, around 13.8%. What are the causes? To understand the data from the INE or the Ministry of Housing, several keys must be taken into account. One, fundamental one, is the shortage of new construction, which remains at levels much lower than those managed by the sector at the beginning of the 2000s. In 2025 the housing stock barely added 94,800 properties more and, although in the last months of the year they began another 34,200 (free housing), the truth is that Spain continues creating new homes much more speed of what raises new buildings. The result: a deficit that the Bank of Spain estimates at 750,000 houses. For reference, of the 700,000 operations closed last year, eight out of ten (78.1%) featured second-hand properties. Meanwhile, the stock of new houses fell by about 6%. “Second-hand housing continues to gain value steadily, reflecting that demand continues to look for opportunities in any type due to the shortage … Read more

Philips Hue renews its ecosystem with new immersive lamps for the TV and Matter-compatible bulbs

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If you have smart lights at homeI’m sure you’ve experienced this domestic drama: you set up the perfect lighting scene to watch a movie, someone enters the room, hits the physical switch on the wall, and unsets the ecosystem light bulb. Goodbye connectivity, goodbye automation and start over. However, the novelty that Philips Hue just launched aims to put an end to this. It is the new Mired Wall Switch Module (or hardwired wall switch module). Until now, previous versions of these modules worked with batteries, which required disassembling the mechanism from time to time to change them. Philips Hue Wall Switch Module The price could vary. We earn commission from these links But this is something that changes with this new module, since it is directly wired to the power supply. With it keeps the bulbs always powered and connected, regardless of whether someone turns off the light from the wall. When you press the physical switch, the system does not cut off the electricity to the bulb, but rather sends a digital command to turn it off or activate the last selected scene. Along with this novelty, the brand has also launched the switches Wired On/Off and Wired Dimmer. These components allow you to integrate traditional non-smart lamps into the Philips Hue app, thus allowing you to regulate their intensity or turn them on along with the rest of the smart bulbs in the house. More immersion for TV and support for Matter The rest of the renewal of the Philips Hue catalog is divided into two types of very interesting products: Philips Hue Play table and floor lamps– Offering ambient and entertainment lighting. They are specifically designed to be placed next to the TV or PC and synchronized with movies, music or video games (using the Hue Sync Box or its dedicated apps), projecting dynamic effects on the wall (in the purest style of the TVs with Ambilight) to improve immersion. Philips Hue Play Smart wallwasher The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Philips Hue Play Floor Lamp The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Latest generation candle bulbs: Classic decorative bulbs for table lamps or sconces receive a technical facelift. They now incorporate full-spectrum daylight technology (to mimic natural light from dawn to night) and, most importantly, gain native compatibility with matterthe standard that facilitates its integration with any digital home platform (Apple Homekit, Google Home or Alexa) without depending exclusively on its bridge. Philips Hue – Smart LED Bulb, B39 E14, pack of 2 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Other Philips Hue products that may interest you Philips Hue Go LED Table Lamp The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Hue Essentials Home Kit: Hue Bridge + 4 E27 smart LED bulbs The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Note: some of the links posted here are affiliate links and may provide a profit. Images | Philips In Xataka | Home alone: ​​buying guide for smart devices to take care of your home when you go on vacation In Xataka | Home automation buying guide for summer: 21 plugs, lighting, cameras, smart robots for the garden

We believed that no Chinese AI model would soon come close to Fable 5 or GPT-5.5. Then GLM-5.2 arrived

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A few days ago, the Chinese startup Zhipu AI (Z.ai) announced the launch of its new open AI model, GLM-5.2. It did so boasting amazing features that brought it very close to the best closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic, something that seemed impossible. Well, the more analysis is carried out on the model, the better off it is. We may be at the beginning of something very important. A change of trend. GLM 5.2. The Chinese startup Z.ai has been releasing different versions of its GLM AI model for a long time, but the latest one is undoubtedly the most surprising because its performance is especially promising. It has 744,000 million parameters (744B), of which 40,000 are those that remain active. We are looking at a model with a context window of one million tokens and a new architecture called IndexShare/IndexCache. Better than GPT-5.5, very close to Opus 4.8. The startup showed how the performance of GLM-5.2 is extraordinary in programming tasks. In the FrontierSWE test, the most demanding of those currently available, GLM-5.2 outperformed GPT-5.5 and only Opus 4.8 was superior by a very small margin. The same happened with other tests such as PostTrainBench or SWE-Marathon, which, for example, evaluates the behavior of the model in very long autonomous programming sessions. Source: Z.ai. In many other tests the photo was identical: the model has made a spectacular leap since version 5.1, and is in many tests almost as good (or better) than the best from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. But it’s not just them who say it.. Artificial Analysis, a reputable independent firm that maintains an updated ranking of the performance of the new AI models that are arriving on the market, confirms the data of Z.ai itself. In his tests he indicates how the “intelligence index” of GLM-5.2 is now 51 points. It is only surpassed by GPT-5.5 (55), Claude Opus 4.8 (56) and Claude Fable 5 (60). Source: Artificial Analysis. This Chinese open model leaves behind the new Gemini 3.5 Flash, but also Chinese competitors such as Qwen 3.7 Max, MiniMax-M3 or DeepSeek V4, among others. The jump in quality from GLM-5.1 is, we insist, outstanding, much greater than what, at least according to this index, was seen from Opus 4.8 to Fable 5. The jump in performance is spectacular, although it is true that the comparative price to solve the tasks proposed in the benchmark rises significantly. Source: Artificial Analysis. But it’s not perfect. The Artificial Analysis report, however, shows that although GLM-5.2 is very strong in areas such as programming, it is weak in others. For example, it is far from being as reliable as Fable 5, GPT-5.5, Claude 4.8 or Gemini 3.1 Pro in terms of correct answers, which is also lower in proportion to that of its competitors. However, his hallucinations have significantly reduced. And it’s much (much) cheaper. But in addition to being fantastic in many areas, it is much cheaper than its competitors. Maintains the price per million input/output tokens of its predecessor ($1.4/4.4), while that of GPT-5.5 It’s 5/30 dollars and that of Opus 4.8 10/50 dollars. It is true that it consumes many more tokens than GPT-5.5 (very efficient) or Claude Opus 4.8, but even with that its final cost is much lower. My tests with GLM-5.2 programming. I’ve been a Z.ai subscriber for months now because they offered an annual subscription at the end of 2025 at a really low price. This has allowed me to test GLM-5.2 for a few hours and although I cannot draw definitive conclusions, it does seem clear that there is a leap in quality in terms of its ability to program. I asked him to review a personal code project and he identified several security flaws and possible improvements in great detail. Chatting with GLM5-2. In conversational mode the behavior is much more difficult to evaluate: I have been interacting with the model and asking it questions, and although it is better than GLM 5.1 many times, other times it is not so much and I would say that in terms of creativity to write the frontier models of Google, OpenAI and especially Anthropic they are still quite superior. You can try it on their websiteand there you will see something else: it takes significantly longer to respond than other chatbots, because its reasoning phase is longer. Take more time to answer questions. Benchmarks are one thing, experience is another.. In the absence of testing it (much) more, of course the impression is that the model has improved significantly compared to a GLM-5.1 that had lagged behind its Chinese competitors (not to mention the current Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.5). On platforms like Reddit opinions are dividedbut many consider it a fantastic option to run locally… if you have a very, very powerful machine with at least 256 GB of unified memory (Mac Studio). And one thing seems clear: when using it as an AI model for programming, comes surprisingly close to Claude Opus 4.8. In Xataka | Chinese technology companies entered the AI ​​race with cheaper models than the rest. That’s starting to end

Big Tech offers you up to 15 GB of free cloud storage. O2 Cloud makes them look ridiculous and gives 10 TB to its customers

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O2 customers are in luck. The operator communicated yesterday a fantastic change in your offer – so far O2 Cloud offered 1 TB of cloud storage included in that plan. Now that capacity is expanded dramatically, with customers now able to access 10TB of cloud storage. It is something amazing if we compare this offer with the space offered by default by Google, Microsoft or Apple, but there are some drawbacks. 10 TB “free”. Years ago, Movistar created Movistar Cloud as an option to create backup copies of your files, and that was striking from the first moment because it also the service’s storage space was theoretically unlimited. O2 Cloud joined that offer some time later, and did so initially with 1 TB of free space (included in the plan) which is now multiplied by ten. If you only have an O2 mobile, you also have 10 TB. Until now this offer was valid for fiber users (whether they also had mobile lines or not), but now O2 offers O2 Cloud with 10 TB of storage included to any user of its services: if you have an O2 mobile line, with or without fiber, you have 10 TB of O2 Cloud for free, included in the plan. Apps for Android and iOS. The service is intended to be a “Dropbox” or “iCloud” that constantly backs up your photos and videos to O2’s cloud storage space. Just install the android app or that of iOSconfigure it by registering for the service and that’s it: we will have those copies for free as we are O2 customers. In the image, the O2 Cloud interface from the web browser. We can view the photos directly there, and the operation is surprisingly fluid. Also on Windows or Mac desktop. It is also possible to use O2 Cloud to save images, videos or documents from a personal computer. I have tested it on my Mac, and it is possible to download the desktop client so that it works in the background: everything you put in the “O2 Cloud” folder will automatically be synchronized with the operator’s cloud storage space. Integrated image editor. This service seems especially designed to safeguard the photos on our mobile phone so that if we lose it or it is stolen, they will remain safe. But it is also a great service for viewing them (it runs very smoothly) and even editing them: the integrated editor offers some basic filters (Sepia, Gray, etc.) and also a few editing tools that give more added value to the solution. The integrated editor is limited, but it can get us out of a quick fix. Customize folders or albums. From there, it is possible to access and download content from our devices, and in O2 Cloud we can also create personalized folders or albums to organize photos and documents based on their theme, location, etc. O2 makes Big Tech look ridiculous. The O2 Cloud service is surprisingly generous, especially when compared to what big technology companies offer. Google offers 15 GB of free storage when you create an account, while Apple and Microsoft offer 5 GB. If you want more, you have to pay, and that’s where subscriptions to paid plans like Google One/Workspace come in, Apple iCloud+or Microsoft 365/Family. We have made a small comparative table, and it is clear that those 10 TB of O2 Cloud are a true gift for the operator’s customers. Ability Monthly price o2 cloud 10TB Included with Fiber/Mobile plan Apple iCloud+ 6TB 29.99 euros Google One 5TB 21.99 euros Microsoft 365 Family 6TB (Up to 6 users, 1 TB per user) 13 euros Dropbox 3TB 12 euros But Big Tech offers other things. It is important to note that it is understandable that big technology companies are so stingy with the free space they offer to users: with hundreds (or thousands) of millions of customers, offering more capacity would force them to grow extraordinarily in resources in their data centers. But in addition, payment services such as Google One, iCloud+ or Microsoft 365 are rather “multiservice” because mix storage with productivity tools, security and, in some cases, AI plans. But if you only had iCloud for photos… However, many users are forced to contract Apple iCloud+ or Google One to maintain that backup of your photos in the clouds of these companies and “everything just works.” The O2 Cloud proposal presents a fantastic alternative for these users, because they get the same thing without paying extra: the plan they have with O2 would already serve to enjoy this service. The integration of those services will always be superior to that of O2 Cloud, of course, but for that basic backup use, the alternative seems extraordinary. What happens if I leave O2?. There is no permanence in O2, but logically if we go to another operator, we will lose access to O2 Cloud. The company gives 30 days to download the files if you unsubscribe before deleting them, which of course gives the option to recover all that data and save it, for example, on an external hard drive and then move it to another cloud service if we wish: there are no (unfortunately) tools or services that allow this “migration” from one cloud to another. Common Terms of Use. O2 Cloud has some terms of use and of privacy which are already common in this type of services. In O2 they explain for example that: “To manage some of the functions necessary to provide the service, we have contracted trusted suppliers who may have access to personal data, who will act as data processors and who will be contractually obliged to comply with their legal obligations as data processor, to maintain the confidentiality and secrecy of the information.” They also clarify that “some of the functions necessary to provide the service are contracted to data processors located outside the European Economic Area”, although they guarantee “an adequate level of protection of personal data”. The personal data … Read more

how to blow up a bridge without tons of bombs

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In May 1943, the RAF launched the famous Operation Chastise: 19 bombers with the so-called “bouncing bombs” of Barnes Wallis to destroy german dams. It was the most sophisticated solution of its time to a classic problem: how to break a gigantic structure with precision. Eight decades later, that same obsession lives on, only now it fits in an operator’s backpack A bridge as an eternal military obsession. There are few things more valuable in a war than a bridge. Concentrating troops, armor and logistics in an obligatory step turns these structures into strategic arteries, and that is why destroying them has always been a military priority. The problem is that they are hard targets by nature: decades of doctrine taught that to knock one down bombers, heavy artillery or high-cost missiles were needed. An alternative has just appeared in Ukraine that breaks that logic. It is not more powerful or faster, but it is much cheaper and more persistent: dozens of small suicide drones working like a colony of termites until the structure is emptied from within. Solve an old problem with new things. What is really important here is not only that Russia has demolished a bridge with 43 FPV dronesbut it demonstrates something that for years was almost a laboratory hypothesis: that tons of explosives are no longer needed to blow up critical infrastructure. During World War II, sinking a bridge could require hundreds of tons of air-dropped bombs. Then came weapons like the ATACMS either the JDAM to do it precisely. Now the equation changes again: less than 250 pounds of ammunition distributed in small impacts can achieve the same effect. The military obsession of “how to cut off the enemy” has just become radically cheaper. The structural logic of collapse. The key is not to destroy it in one fell swoop, but to understand how does a bridge hold up. Reinforced concrete is strong because it combines two materials with different functions: concrete supports compression and steel absorbs tension. The FPVs they don’t need split the entire column. They just have to go tearing off layers of concrete until the metal skeleton is exposed. At that moment the structure loses much of its load capacity. The steel is still there, but it is no longer enough to support the weight. The bridge begins to collapse on itself and collapse due to structural fatigue. The war of accumulation. This introduces a completely different logic to military destruction. Before, power concentrated in a single blow mattered. Now it matters sum of many blows small, extremely precise and always directed to the same point. The first impacts barely remove fragments of cement. The following deepen the crack. The latter turn the column into an empty shell. It’s something like the industrialization of wear: a slow, but surgical method. What once required an aerial window, tactical superiority, and millions of dollars can now be done with patience, coordination, and a backpack. full of quadcopters. Ridiculous cost, enormous strategic effect. The most brutal fact is economic. The 43 FPVs used in the attack They would have cost less than $25,000. That’s about half of a single American guided bomb and a ridiculous fraction of the price of an ATACMS missile. The comparison is devastating for any classical military planning, because for the cost of a single strategic missile you can launch forty similar attacks. And without exposing pilots, planes or large platforms. It is the democratization of tactical demolition: destroying critical infrastructure is no longer the privilege of those who have heavy aviation. What comes next. Possibly, the big impact of this is not on the bridge in question, but on what it redefines as a viable objective from now on. If a handful of FPVs can knock down a highway structure, railway bridges, overpasses, logistics warehouses and even tall buildings start to come into the equation. Even more so if the drones use linear hollow charges capable of directly cutting steel bars. Systems like Pasikawhich allow a single operator to control entire swarms, further accelerate that process. The question is no longer whether they can do it. The question is how many critical structures in the world are still designed under the old idea that only big bombs can bring them down. Ukraine is showing that that era is over. Image | Rasal HagueDmitro Zavtonov In Xataka | “Speed ​​is not the key”: the trick against all logic of Ukrainian drones to hunt the fearsome Russian shahed In Xataka | “They are preparing the deployment of 80,000 soldiers”: satellites indicate where Russia is heading in Europe after Ukraine

There is only one person in Star Trek history who has played herself, and the scene remains legendary

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The android Data needed the three most brilliant scientists in history for a game of poker on the holodeck, and the chosen ones were Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. The first two had been dead for decades (or centuries). The third was fifty-one years old and had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but he had expressed his desire to appear in the series to Paramount bosses. When was it? On June 21, 1993, the finale of the sixth season of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’. The first ninety seconds of the episode, titled ‘Descent, Part 1’, contain something that It hasn’t happened again. in more than fifty years of franchise: a real person, with a first and last name, playing himself. It was Stephen Hawking. How it started. Hawking visited the offices of Paramount Pictures in 1991 to present a documentary about his life directed by Errol Morris. Rick Berman, executive producer of the series, discovered during the visit that Hawking was a trekkie declared and offered him a tour of the sets of ‘The New Generation’. And once on the set, the scientist made an unusual request: that he be taken out of his wheelchair (something unusual) so he could sit in the captain’s chair. Once installed, he commented to his host Leonard Nimoy (Spock in the original series) that the seat was considerably more comfortable and powerful than his chair. He then asked if there was any chance of appearing on the show. The producers took note. Hawking would return to Los Angeles a few months later, and a filming window was available. All that was left was to know what the hell a theoretical physicist with ALS was going to do in an episode of a science fiction series without it coming off as parody, or even condescending. To do. The scriptwriters decided that the most appropriate thing was a scene in the holodeck, probably accompanied by the android Data. From there, it was time to build a scene that justified the presence of the most famous scientist in the world. Executive producer Michael Piller came up with the idea that solved it all: a poker game. The Enterprise holodeck allowed any historical figure to be recreated with precision, and the lucky ones were Newton, dead since 1727, and Einstein, since 1955. And Hawking, also dead in the fiction of the series, but capable of playing himself. To construct the physics joke that opens the scene, screenwriter Ronald D. Moore called his partner Naren Shankar, a doctor in applied physics and future showrunner of ‘CSI’. Shankar designed the Mercury perihelion joke (a phenomenon that Newtonian mechanics is unable to explain), and proposed the comic dynamic between the three scientists, with Hawking and Einstein mocking Newton. April 8. Hawking filmed his appearance April 8, 1993. Brent Spiner, who played Data and usually had no problem bringing the android’s emotional coldness to life, was nervous. The actor later described that moment as “probably my favorite moment in my entire experience doing Star Trek.” The scene that was filmed that day ended up lasting less than two minutes. In it, after joking about the possible apocryphal quality of the story of Newton and the apple, Hawking wins the hand, and Einstein argues that the odds of that victory could not have been improved even by quantum fluctuations. Hawking replies (with seconds): “Wrong again, Albert.” A historic cameo. It was not the first time that ‘Star Trek’ played with historical figures: we had even seen Abraham Lincoln fighting alongside Kirk and Spock. But Hawking is still, todaythe only real person to have played herself in any series or film in the ‘Star Trek’ universe. Furthermore, that cameo came at a particular time for the franchise: the audience for the sixth season of ‘The Next Generation’ was beginning to experience a gradual decline and ‘Deep Space Nine’ premiered that year. The franchise was expanding and the public was divided, but there was time for a cameo that was almost a declaration of intent. Moore claims that Hawking had helped build, with his work on black holes and cosmology, the type of scientific imaginary that ‘Star Trek’ had been playing with for decades. That he wanted to appear on the show, that he didn’t disdain science fiction but rather enjoyed it, functioned as a kind of circular validation. That’s why there is one last icing on the cake in the chapter: in the future that the episode imagines, it is revealed that Data holds the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. That same chair was held by Hawking between 1979 and 2009, and before him, Newton between 1669 and 1702. The three would end up sitting at a poker table in a future imagined in 1993. In Xataka | The complex? intergalactic politics: why there are those who say that Star Trek is communist and Star Wars is capitalist

A single programmer, simple mechanics, crappy graphics and Paint interface. And he has earned ten million in a week

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Characters that are generic puppets, aseptic to the point of being experimental, elements in the sets that seem to come from a free library for programming learners, an interface that has completely renounced any hint of design or usability and that seems to come from a ‘Paint’ type application… ‘Meccha Chameleon’ has, however, almost ten million dollars earned in one week on Steamand the only reason is not its extremely low price. The milestones. On June 9, Japanese developer lemorion_1224 launched the game on Steam at a price of only $4.99. Today it has sold more than two million units, that is, it has earned about ten million dollars. Discounting the 30% that Valve keeps, the developer has made 6.9 million in less than a week. And it’s all the work of this solo programmer, in approximately two months. How to play. The central mechanic of ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is simple: at the beginning of each round, some players hide and others look for them. The difference with other hide-and-seek games is that hiders can paint themselves to blend in with their surroundings, like chameleons do (sometimes with hilarious results that content creators are fond of). exploiting thoroughly). The more elaborate the camouflage, the harder the player will be to detect. That is, the ability to replicate the pattern of a wallpaper or a painting comes into play. Those less skilled with the brush have another option: look for dark corners of the map where uniform camouflage is sufficient. The precedent. The game collects ideas from ‘Prop Hunt’, a mode that was born in the mythical and highly cult ‘Garry’s Mod’, and that was later incorporated into franchises such as ‘Call of Duty’. The mechanics are the same: some players start as hunters, the chameleons hide, and those who are discovered go to the opposite side. An option can be activated with which those hidden whistle from time to time to give clues about their position. What is original about this new iteration of the idea is the layer of paint that allows for more effective camouflage. But… who is Lemorion_1224? Certainly not a newcomer. This developer had been experimenting for years with hiding mechanics within ‘Fortnite Creative’, the development platform integrated into ‘Fortnite’ that allows you to publish your own modes and accumulate players at no cost. Among these There is a game where players hide by making themselves extremely thin and another where they disguise themselves as NPCs. Lemorion_1224 has also experimented with mechanics inspired by ‘Dead by Daylight’ and ‘Peak’. ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is, therefore, the distillate of several years of testing. Friendslop it. Meccha Chameleon belongs to what in recent years has been called “friendslop”: cheap games, with a very simple, even tacky, visual finish, designed to be played in a group and shared on social networks. That is, games like ‘Peak’, ‘Lethal Company’ or ‘REPO’. The common denominator is the price (below six dollars in most cases), the viral potential and an approach that can be explained in thirty seconds. But to say that ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is part of a viral trend is to understate it: it had a peak of 200,000 simultaneous playerssomething that many AAAs never achieve. ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is another of the very triumphant successes of the medium that reminds us that issues such as graphics or technical neatness are completely accessory aspects to generate fun. In Xataka | This game has been programmed by only one person, and it is already being talked about as one of the great shooters of the year

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