Mobile Tech & Gadgets

The retail SSD market has all but disappeared. And it is not because users have stopped buying them

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Buying an SSD seemed, until not so long ago, one of those fairly simple decisions in the PC world: choose capacity, look at speeds, compare prices and little else. But the market behind this daily gesture has changed significantly. What we have seen in recent months is not a disappearance of the need for storage, but a much deeper strain on the supply chain. SSDs are still necessary, but an increasing share of drives that could previously end up in the channel retail seems to be finding other destinations before reaching the retail window. what’s happening. The clearest signal was put on the table by Nelson Duann, vice president of Silicon Motion, one of the major manufacturers of SSD controllers. In an interview with Tom’s Hardware during Computex 2026the executive summarized his reading of the market like this: “The retail SSD market has practically disappeared.” He was not talking about a specific drop or a minor adjustment, but rather about what happened during the first half of 2026, a period in which retail sales of SSDs fell significantly. The chain has moved. The key point is who is buying those units now. Duann explained that the controllers sold by silicon motion to module assemblers, that is, companies that integrate memory, controllers and other components to sell complete SSDs, largely end up in units destined for PC manufacturers. It’s not a minor detail: according to that reading, manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Dell or HP can’t get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from the big memory manufacturers, so they are turning to a channel that previously looked much more towards the end user. The pressure of AI. The background appears clearly in TrendForce data. According to the consulting firm, cloud service providers increased demand for enterprise SSDs in the first quarter of 2026 due to the need to build infrastructure for AI servers, with high-speed data transmission and enormous storage capacities. Added to that was another factor: the structural shortage of traditional hard drives pushed a significant portion of orders toward QLC enterprise SSDs. There are figures. TrendForce says the combined revenue of the world’s five largest NAND Flash vendors grew 83.7% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 to exceed $38.9 billion. The increase came in a scenario of strong demand and limited supply, with average sales prices above expectations. The distribution also shows the scale of the phenomenon: Samsung closed the quarter with 13.51 billion dollars, SK hynix Group reached about 7.53 billion and Kioxia reached 5.96 billion. The indirect winnerss. The hit to the retail storefront does not mean that the entire chain is losing at the same rate. Duann added that, in the past, most of these companies were focused on selling to the end user, but since the end of last year and through 2026 that dynamic has changed. Demand from PC manufacturers has strengthened and those suppliers are directing a significant portion of their production directly to them. For companies like Silicon Motion, which sell SSD controllers to these assemblers, the market continues to move, although it does so through another door. What the buyer notices. This industrial readjustment ends up reaching the user in a fairly direct way. As we have seen, the prices of consumer SSDs have increased significantly in recent quarters due to the priority that memory manufacturers are giving to the AI ​​sector. That is to say, the pressure does not stay in the data centers, it also filters down to the shop window and the computer that we end up buying. everything remains the same. TrendForce indicates that large NAND Flash suppliers will add virtually no new capacity during the year and that, due to AI-related demand, supply shortages will remain. Production will also continue to be heavily focused on server storage applications, with high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs gaining penetration. In this context, the retail market is conditioned by an industrial priority that does not aim to change immediately. In summary. The retail SSD market has weakened not because the user no longer needs fast storage, but because the industry has changed its order of priorities. Available NAND is being disputed between data centers, large buyers in the PC industry and companies trying to respond to increasingly server-oriented demand. What once came more naturally to the showcase is now more likely to end up integrated into a new team or AI infrastructure. The SSD is still there, but the usual buyer is no longer first in line. Images | Western Digital + Photoshop In Xataka | SSD prices are so crazy that a 2TB drive for the PS5 costs more than the PS5 itself

the “secret” heat shield of the Ariane 6 parts that Airbus manufactures in Spain

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We are used to “aerospace” sounding like almost futuristic materials. Titanium, high-strength aluminum, carbon fiber, alloys designed to withstand extreme conditions. The technology industry itself has turned that idea into a sales argument: just remember how some laptops and cell phones They boast of using “aerospace grade” materials.“to convey lightness, resistance and precision. That is why what happened this week during a visit to the Airbus facilities in Getafe caught my attention. In front of one of the pieces, Veronica Villanuevaresponsible for Manufacturing, Assembly, Integration and Testing at Airbus Space Systems in Spain, pointed to a yellowish surface and said it bluntly: “What you see here is yellowish, this is corkit is the thermal insulator that is put on, it is super curious, right?” The phrase had some revelation, but it was not an anecdote for visitors. The cork was there for a very specific reason: a launcher must not only be able to take off, it also has to protect its structures in a very demanding physical environment. In this case, Villanueva was talking about pieces linked to the Ariane 6. We are not talking about an “Airbus rocket”, but rather a European launcher in which ArianeGroup occupies the central role and Airbus participates by manufacturing several structures and key elements. The cork we saw in Getafe shows that space engineering also has very everyday surprises To understand why this detail was so striking, it is worth taking a step back in manufacturing. Before reaching the cork, many of these structures go through a process based on composite materials, especially carbon fiber and fiberglass. Villanueva explained during the tour that the carbon fiber used in the plant arrives as a prepreg material, that is, already mixed with resin. From there, the machines place layers on a mold until the desired geometry is built. Then will come the curing, the inspection and everything necessary to turn that stack into a piece capable of being part of a launcher. The underlying reason is easy to understand: in a launch, every kilo counts long before reaching orbit. A launcher must lift its own structure, its systems and the load it carries, so any weight savings can have significant consequences. The manufacturing manager defended during the tour that composite materials are especially interesting due to their low mass, their tensile strength and their ability to adapt to changes in temperature. The downside is that they are not as simple or as cheap to manufacture as metal. View of the Airbus production area in Getafe, where some structures linked to Ariane 6 incorporate cork as part of their thermal protection That complexity appears as soon as the structure begins to take shape. After taping, the pieces go through an autoclavea type of large pressurized oven where temperature and pressure are controlled so that the resin solidifies and the whole is compacted. Villanueva explained that the process includes a vacuum bag to extract any air that may have remained between the layers, an important detail because possible defects are not always visible from the outside. In a composite structure, what happens on the inside can be as relevant as the exterior geometry. Verónica Villanueva, responsible for Manufacturing, Assembly, Integration and Testing at Airbus Space Systems in Spain And then, after all that chain of carbon fiber, resin, pressure, vacuum and inspection, the least expected material appears again. Cork is applied to certain areas of the structure as a layer of protection against heat, but not in any way. Raúl Medina, head of launchers at Airbus Space Systems Spain, pointed out the pieces during the visit and gave a very specific measurement: “We can go from 2 millimeters to 5 millimeters thick.” On the indicated pieces, that layer moved within a very specific margin. Detail of an Ariane 6 part manufactured by Airbus in Spain. The light areas show the cork applied as thermal protection; the dark ones, areas without that coating The decision is not made by eye either. Medina summed it up with a very graphic phrase: “This in the end is an art. There are thermal engineers who analyze that you will be exposed to more heat and then, depending on that, more thickness, less thickness or areas without cork“On the surface of the piece, this thermal reading translates into areas with more protection, others with less and others where the material from the cork oak is not directly applied. Raúl Medina, head of launchers at Airbus Space Systems Spain. The idea may sound strange, but it does not appear isolated in the European space industry. In another application, ESA explained it with the Qarman CubeSatdesigned to study atmospheric reentry: its nose was made of cork, although not the kind we find in a champagne bottle, but of an adapted aerospace variety. The difference is in the behavior of the material when heated. First it swells, then chars, and finally flakes off, taking some of the unwanted heat with it. Detail of an Ariane 6 part manufactured by Airbus in Spain. The light areas show the cork applied as thermal protection; the dark ones, areas without that coating The supplier’s lead pointed in the same direction. Villanueva pointed out during the visit that that cork came from Portugal, and Medina added that whoever supplies it to the aerospace industry belongs to the same industrial universe that we associate with the wine and champagne corks. In open sources, that description fits Amorim Cork Solutionspart of the Portuguese group Corticeira Amorim, one of the world’s greatest names in cork. The ESA, in fact, identified Amorim as a supplier of the aerospace variety used in Qarman, although Airbus did not detail there the specific supplier of the parts before us. One of the fascinating things about the space industry is that it always holds some surprises. We can imagine it as a territory dominated by advanced materials, highly controlled processes and pieces designed to the limit, and to a large extent it is. But it … Read more

Today on Prime Video, a disaster movie that lost 45 million in theaters but is sweeping streaming

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In January 2026, ‘Greenland 2‘ premiered at number six at the US box office and closed its run in theaters with 44.8 million dollars collected against a budget of 90. The numbers are incontestable: a tremendous failure. Five months later, the sequel starring Gerard Butler tops the most watched lists on HBO Max in the United States, and now lands in Spain in Prime Video. The story of this saga begins with a pandemic and a comet. The first ‘Greenland’ never reached American theaters: COVID-19 forced it to be transferred directly to video on demand in December of that year. In international cinemas it did have a theatrical release, and it worked very well, since the reviews were good despite it being a genre not very popular with specialists. But it was the perfect time for a film of this type. The sequel tried to ride that same wave, but it didn’t turn out so well, although it ended up finding its audience. The family protagonist of the first installment has been in an underground bunker in Greenland for five years after the impact of a comet, but a series of earthquakes destroys the shelter and forces them to evacuate. They will head towards the south of France, where a crater has generated a habitable microclimate, free of electromagnetic storms and radiation. A true epic in which they will have to test their courage, their resistance and their trust in the family unit. The trajectory of ‘Greenland 2’ has parallels with that of ‘Tomorrow’s War’, the science fiction thriller with Chris Pratt that Paramount gave to Prime Video during the pandemic. It passed without pain or glory in theaters, with barely 19 million dollars collected against a budget of 200 million, but it became one of the most viewed films of the year. streaming at that time and one of the first massive successes of the Amazon platform. New dynamics of exploitation, new unexpected successes, and yes, a common point: the destruction of the planet, better to see it comfortably at home. In Xataka | Premiere: Harlan Coben is the real King Midas of Netflix, and he has a new series to confirm it

Choosing your 5 daily fruits and vegetables also matters

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We have all heard the importance of taking 5 pieces of fruit and/or vegetables up to date to keep our health in shape. Not all of us do it as regularly as we should, but we know the recommendation. What is not so well known is that, in reality, a random selection of 5 fruits or vegetables is not the best way to achieve those desired health standards. At least, that is the conclusion he has reached with your investigations Professor of Nutrition at the University of Reading Gunther Kuhnle. The case of flavanols. If it is recommended to take 5 pieces of fruit or vegetables a day, it is because they are foods that contain a large amount of bioactives. That is, substances that exert a biological effect on our body that contributes to improving our health. There are many bioactives, but, without a doubt, one of the most important in the plant world are flavanols. For this reason, Kuhnle’s team carried out a study aimed at checking whether we normally consume an adequate amount of flavanols and, if positive, if it can be correlated with the consumption of 5 pieces of fruit or vegetables a day. The recommended amount of flavanols to experience their positive effects on health is 500 milligrams daily. In the study it was seen that, indeed, it is something that can be managed with a normal diet. It is not necessary to resort to supplements or anything like that. However, it was also concluded that very few people actually reach that level of consumption. Even if they religiously eat their 5 pieces of fruit and/or vegetables. Neither surveys nor diaries. Diet studies are often conducted by asking participants to keep a food diary. On other occasions, they are surveyed about their eating habits. However, these types of methods are not the most reliable, since we do not always remember everything we have eaten. For this reason, these scientists chose to analyze urine in search of markers that indicate the bioactives that have been absorbed by the body from the diet. The study involved 30,000 people who had provided their urine samples for studies carried out in the United Kingdom and the United States. Amazing results. In this study it was seen that less than 1 in 5 participants reached the dose of 500 milligrams per day of flavanols. Even if they ate the recommended amount of vegetables. They also noted that the results were quite different in the two participating countries. In the United States, if they followed the 5-piece recommendation, 20% reached 500 mg of flavanols. In the United Kingdom, only 10% of those who followed the recommendations reached it. However, very curiously, there were many who did reach the recommended dose without taking the 5 pieces of fruits and/or vegetables a day. The key is in the tea. Tea is one of the foods richest in flavanols.. In countries like the United States, tea consumption can be related to leading a healthy life and, therefore, eating a lot of fruits and vegetables. However, in the United Kingdom it is more of a cultural thing. For this reason, many people who do not actually eat the recommended amount of vegetables do reach 500 mg of flavanols per day. Consumption of green tea is a great option Not everything is going to be infusions. After this study, Kuhnle concludes that “a random selection of 5 fruits and vegetables each day is unlikely to provide significant amounts of bioactives.” Therefore, he recommends choosing them wisely. In the case of flavanols, there are vegetables such as carrots, cauliflower or cucumbers, which have very little. However, cherries, berries, grapes and apples are very rich in these compounds. So is cocoa. You don’t have to get obsessed either.. Eating 5 pieces of vegetables a day is better than not eating fruit or vegetables. With that we are already helping our health. What this scientist proposes is, once this is achieved, go one step further and inform ourselves about the nutritional content of the vegetables we are eating. Carrots do not have flavanols, but they are very rich in carotenoids, which are also very necessary for health. The ideal is to look for a good contribution of the greatest amount of bioactives. a good example. To optimize the benefits, you can combine berries such as blueberries with artichoke, kale, carrot and pomegranate. Thus, flavanols are obtained, but also other polyphenols (flavanols are flavonoids and flavonoids are polyphenols), vitamin C, carotenoids, folate, calcium, potassium or fiber. Granda’s ellagitanninsfor example, are very interesting polyphenols due to their benefits related to intestinal health. On the other hand, although it is important to make it clear that all fruits and vegetables are healthy (as long as they are edible), it is true that there are some that are somewhat nutritionally poorer. This is, for example, the case of lettuce or cucumber. They also provide some benefits, but we should not focus all our vegetable contributions to the diet on them. In short, if you can, try to choose your five pieces of fruit and vegetables wisely. And if you top it off with tea, all the better. The five pieces are indicative. In fact, there are several studies that They aim more accurately at a consumption of 400 grams of fruits and vegetables per day. The five pieces is an indicative calculation so that we can do accounting without the need for a scale. Be that as it may, the important thing, more than the numbers, is that we have a balanced diet, with the greatest possible amount of nutrients. And of course, for that, information is power. Image | Julia Zolotova (Unsplash) | Magnificent In Xataka | We are heading towards the most expensive chocolate in history: how the cocoa crisis is going to skyrocket its price

It’s one you can use on unlimited devices. And now it comes with four extra months with this flash offer

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If we talk about the best VPNsSurfshark must be included. This company, beyond its service, also stands out for continually launching promos throughout the year. They just released a new one that is not bad at all: if you subscribe to one of their plans, you get four extra months if you access through the link below. And their subscriptions start from 2.39 euros per month. Surfshark Starter Subscription – monthly The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A VPN that you can install on all your devices A VPN It is a tool that can come in handy, especially now that the holidays are approaching and perhaps we are taking a getaway away from home. It is true that we can use a free option at a specific time, but using these is not worth it in the long run.. The reason is simple: none is as safe as it promises. Imagine that you are going to travel abroad for a few days and you are going to stay in a hotel where there is WiFi or you need to connect at the airport. These types of unknown networks can be dangerous, but it is something we can solve by using a VPN. With this activated, we will pass all our Internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel and no one will be able to intercept our data. Ideal if, for example, you are going to order an Uber and your card is in the app. In addition, it can also be great for you if you are outside of Spain and want to watch the World Cup through your DAZN account. The Surfshark VPN is an option that, in addition to being secure, stands out because can be installed and used on all your devices without paying more. In addition, it is fast and has more than 4,500 servers to connect to. Finally, let’s go with the promo. Surfshark had been offering three extra months on its two-year subscriptions, but this has changed: now there are four extra months for one and two year subscriptions. In the long run, the most economical way is to go for 24 months, which would cost 2.39 euros per month (that is, a total of 66.92 euros). However, we would have 28 months in total. Do you prefer just one year? Then you would have to pay 3.09 euros per month or 49.44 euros in total for 16 months of VPN. Important: keep in mind that this promo It will only be available until next June 28. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Image | Marc Wieland, engin akyurtSurfshark In Xataka | Best VPNs: guide with the 17 best services to protect your online privacy In Xataka | Why it is dangerous to connect to public Wi-Fi and what you should do to protect yourself

“It is very difficult for a worker to reach 67 years of age in full capacity”

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The vast majority of employees over 63 have something in common: they can’t wait to retire. However, with each passing year, retirement seems a little further away. In reality, it is not a perception, but it’s a reality which has been occurring since 2011, when the regulations were approved that delay the retirement age by a few months each year. Alfonso Muñoz Cuenca, Social Security official specialized in pensions, counted from her YouTube channel the case of an acquaintance who was 65 years old and had 25 years of contributions who couldn’t wait to retire. For the expert, this feeling is the symptom of a problem that is repeated more and more as they harden retirement requirements: There are people who reach the final stretch of their working life without the real ability to sustain the pace required of them. Age increases, but the body does not always accompany. As and as highlighted Trendsthe Social Security reform of 2011 established in the Law 27/2011 established the progressive delay of the retirement age, while the requirements to access it were also increased. In 2026, only those people who can prove a minimum of 38 years and 3 months of contributions will be able to retire at age 65. Whoever has not paid for that time will have to wait until the 66 years and 10 months to retire. The current pension system was designed in a very different social and health context, in which workers lived an average of seven years after retiring. According to INE data Today life expectancy exceeds 20 years on average after retiring. However, the fact that life expectancy is longer does not mean that the most veterans reach the end of their working life in full physical condition to meet the demands of the position, which makes the latter especially hard for them. Burnout does not always have a diagnosis. Muñoz Cuenca summarizes it in his video, stating that “there are workers who can barely reach the age of 67 standing on a scaffold, or doing endless shifts in a hospital without rest.” The problem is that this wear and tear rarely appears in a medical report. There is no declared disability, but rather accumulated fatigue, loss of rhythm and a body that no longer responds the same who did it when he was 40 or 50 years old. The burnout data in Spain collected by Unobravo confirm that 55% have suffered total exhaustion at some point. The health sector and care professions are those most affected by this situationwith sectors with chronic staff shortages and high workloads. He UGT report of 2025 He adds that job insecurity increases the probability of developing depression by 61%. The exhaustion of employees in the last years of their working career that Muñoz Cuenca describes has, apparently, a lot of statistical support. The problem of the years listed. In his video, the expert comments on the case of a 65 and a half year old worker who wants to retire, but only accumulates 25 years of contributions, which closes the doors to early retirement. Just to have the chance to access early retirement On a voluntary basis, you need to have contributed for at least 35 years. Whoever does not reach those figures has few options. Muñoz Account says that, after a career marked by the precariousness of temporary contracts, the years dedicated to caring for her children, not adding these minimums is more common than it seems. He Labor Market Report for those over 45 in 2026 Prepared by the Occupations Observatory, there are more than eleven million people over 45 years of age employed or affiliated with Social Security, more than half of the total. Many arrived late to the labor market or have accumulated careers with many bumps, which makes them serious candidates for not meeting the minimum requirements to access retirement at age 65. Partial retirement as an escape valve. Muñoz Cuenca proposes what he calls “work slowdown”: reducing the workload progressively as the end of active life approaches. Not as a new right, but as a change of mentality in companies to facilitate generational change. The legal tool already exists in the form of partial retirement with relief contract. From 2025, you can apply up to three years before the ordinary age, with a minimum of 33 years of contributions. This mechanism allows the employee’s working hours to be reduced by between 25% and 75%, and collect part of the pension, while the company hires someone to cover the remaining hours and train them to take their place when retirement is final. However, far from being the norm, this type of progressive retirements They are the exception since not all companies are obliged to accept it, so the employee has no choice but to force the machine beyond its capabilities, resulting in an increase of 43% in the number of leave among employees between 55 and 65 years old. Gina Aran, human resources consultant, confirmed in an interview for The Vanguard that “retirement should be one’s own choice, made judiciously, taking into account the state of health, and insists that it should not be something abrupt and obligatory.” In Xataka | Social Security has published the data on sick leave in 2024 and we have bad news: we have broken a record Image | Unsplash (Sweet Life)

Chile approved a direct submarine cable to China. The decision unleashed a diplomatic scandal with the US in the middle of everything

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For decades, Chile has tried to reduce its digital dependence on North America. The arrival of China Mobile as an alternative seemed like a solution to all their problems with the laying of a submarine cable from Valparaíso to Hong Kong. However, the issue has led to a tremendous geopolitical mess that is difficult to deal with. All because the United States had not liked the move one bit. Dependent independence. Almost all of the submarine cable infrastructure that connects Chile with the rest of the world passes through US territory or is in the hands of North American technology companies such as Google, Meta or Amazon. When Chile sought a direct route to Asia, it found that the only viable option passed through China. And of course, that set off all the alarms in Washington. What was being negotiated. China Mobile, a Chinese state telecommunications company, presented a $500 million proposal to lay an underwater cable of about 20,000 kilometers between the Chilean city of Concón and Hong Kong. The project, called Chile-China Express, would have been the first transpacific data connection from Latin America to Asia without passing through North America. The Chilean Ministry of Telecommunications approved the proposal last January. Washington’s response. Just like share Rest of World, two days after Chile signed the concession decree, the ministry annulled it, alleging “a technical error.” According to the mediumChilean officials had been urgently summoned to the US embassy in Santiago. And on February 20, the State Department revoked the visas of the Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications, Juan Carlos Muñoz, along with two other senior officials in the sector. The official notification was that their actions had “compromised critical telecommunications infrastructure and undermined regional security.” Munoz explained to Rest of World that the sanction prevented him from visiting a key country for his work and that it had damaged his reputation. What Chile defended. From Chile’s perspective, the evaluation of the project was an ordinary procedure. Jorge Heine, former Chilean diplomat, pointed out to the environment that diversifying digital communication sources is essential to avoid outages caused by geopolitical tensions. “The State Department entered uncharted territory,” he said, by sanctioning officials for doing their jobs legally. The new president inherits the problem. The change of government on March 11 complicated the scenario even more. The previous president, Gabriel Boric, acknowledged having ordered the withdrawal of approval after threats from the United States about long-term consequences. His successor, the right-wing José Antonio Kast, came to power with the poisoned task of maintaining relations with China, his main trading partner, without raising blisters to the United States (which is his main foreign investor). Complicated. The US ambassador to Chile made it clear shortly after the inauguration that the Chinese cable was “ruled out.” The official position has become more nuanced. The Kast government initially counted on Google’s Humboldt cable, that will connect Chile with Australia in 2027made the China project unnecessary. But more recently, executive sources have acknowledged that the China Mobile project “continues to be evaluated.” Pedro Huichalaf, cybersecurity researcher and former secretary of telecommunications, explained to Rest of World that for Chile “it still makes sense to create redundancy” with a main and a secondary route to Asia. The geopolitical trap. The Google cable does not completely solve the problem. And according to point Heine, intelligence agreements between the United States and Australia mean that South American data trafficking to the Asia-Pacific will continue under American supervision. And there is already precedent for this, since after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s global surveillance programs, Brazil and the European Union accelerated the deployment of the EllaLink cable to connect directly and avoid passing through North America. How the board looks. China has been expanding its digital presence in Latin America. And the country operates 5G networks and data centers in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Argentina through companies such as China Telecom, Huawei, ZTE and Alibaba Cloud. Brazil, for its part, is promoting its own 35,000-kilometer cable that would connect with China, India, Russia and South Africa. Washington views each of these moves as a threat to its influence in the hemisphere. In fact, just as stands out In the middle, the so-called Donroe Doctrine of the Trump administration formalizes that position by not allowing “foreign adversaries” to use trade as a lever to control critical infrastructure in the region. And in the long term. Just like point Rest of World, the most solid solution for Chile is not to choose between Washington and Beijing, but to reduce dependence on both. Aisén Etcheverry, former Minister of Science and Technology in the Boric government and a technology consultant, told the media that “Latin America has built lasting relationships with a wide variety of partners. Although this provides resilience, it is not enough. Developing its own capabilities must be a priority.” Cover image | aboodi vesakaran and AI generation with Gemini In Xataka | An unexpected salvation for the end user emerges from the memory market debacle: Chinese chips

If the question is whether your neighbors can prohibit you from having a dog, the answer is not in the Animal Welfare Law: it is in Vigo

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Can the community of owners of your building prohibit you from having a pet? The answer, as is usual when it comes to legislation and clash of rights, is a huge ‘it depends’. The Horizontal Property Law (LHP) says little about it and the animal welfare standard It even remembers that owners are obliged to keep their dogs, cats and other animals “integrated into the family nucleus.” Now, a sentence dictated in Galicia reminds us that the subject is much more complex and has chiaroscuros. There, in fact, a man has lost the legal battle to live with his poodle. Legal pulse in Galicia. Coexistence in neighborhood communities is not always easy. even less when a dog, cat or any other pet that can cause noise or dirty common areas is added to the equation. In a building in Nigrán (province of Pontevedra) these frictions have led to a legal pulse between the owner of a flat and the rest of his neighbors that has had an unexpected outcome: justice has endorsed that the latter (the board of owners) have the right to prohibit the former from living with their dog. It matters when and how. The sentence Galician, yes, responds to a case with very specific particularities. To understand it, we have to go back to 2010, when the residents of the property unanimously approved, in an ordinary general meeting, to prohibit the presence of any animal on the floors and common areas of the building. They only left one exception: guide dogs. In 2011, that decision was ratified as an internal rule that was incorporated into the community’s statutes, where it remains today. In theory, the pet ban didn’t cause any more problems until a few years ago, when one of the families in the building acquired a poodle. This led to the rest of the neighbors holding an extraordinary general meeting at the end of 2023 to revalidate the 2010 rule and reiterate the veto on pets. The dog’s owner did not like the decision, who went to court in March 2024 for what he considered an “abusive” rule and contrary to the Animal Welfare Law. Crossover of arguments. The Nigrán lawsuit is interesting because it demonstrates the legal intricacies that these types of disputes can have, but it is equally important to understand that the ruling responds to a very specific case. To begin with, there is a key fact that is responsible for highlighting the magistrate herself in her order: the neighbor in disagreement knew “the existence, content and purpose” of the community rule long before acquiring the poodle. What’s more, if the pet ban was approved in 2010, it was partly at the request of his father, who already lived in the property. In short: the affected party was informed of the ban. What did he then claim before the judge? That, in his opinion, the legal context of 2010 is not the same as that of 2024, when he presented his complaint. And it is not, he insists, because in September 2023 The Animal Welfare Law (LBA) came into force, a rule that recognizes pets as “sentient” beings. Did you convince the magistrate? No. Perhaps the legislation on pets is different today than in 2010, but the Vigo judge in charge of the lawsuit has seen it clearly: The LBA does not overthrow the board’s agreement. “It does not establish an absolute and unlimited right to own pets nor does it automatically repeal any community provision that regulates or limits said tendency.” “It does not eliminate the possibility of establishing legitimate limitations when they respond to reasons of coexistence, health or general interest,” he emphasizes. What exactly does the LBA say? The rule, which came into force three years ago, points out that owners of pets must “keep them integrated into the family nucleus, whenever possible due to their species, in good health and hygiene”, although it also specifies that when this is not feasible (due to their size or species) their caregivers must find them “appropriate accommodation”. He same article of the LBA makes it clear in any case that pet owners are obliged to adopt “the necessary measures” so that they do not cause “annoyance, danger, threats or damage” to other people, animals or property, which includes, among other things, preventing them from soiling public spaces. And the Horizontal Property Law? When it comes to coexistence and blocks of neighbors, the reference Bible is another norm, something older: the Horizontal Property Law (LPH). It does not address the issue of pets directly, but it does provide a series of important guidelines. The main one appears in article 7.2, which reminds that neither the owner of an apartment nor its tenants, if any, can carry out “activities prohibited in the statutes, harmful to the property or that contravene the general provisions on annoying, unhealthy, harmful, dangerous or illicit activities.” In cases like this it can end in trial. The value of the statutes. The ruling of the Vigo court recalls the weight of the decisions adopted in neighborhood associations, the statutes and the importance of the rules of coexistence being duly registered in the Property Registry. Also the nuance of whether the veto on pets is before or after a neighbor gets one and whether or not he knows this in advance. In any case the Galician magistrate slide An important fact: the LBA “does not establish an unrestricted right to the presence of animals anywhere.” Images | Charles Puaud (Unsplash) and Zhen Yao (Unsplash) In Xataka | Your cat asks you to cuddle and then bites you. It’s not evil, it’s that you don’t understand its signs

The world has been searching for the formula against the housing crisis for decades. There are those who believe that the answer is in Vancouver

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When you think about the residential market, price escalation and affordability of housing, more and more cities are looking up. The idea is very simple: build taller buildings and make more use of limited land, especially in the most sought-after neighborhoods. That philosophy is catching on, for example in Basque Countrywhere new apartments are proposed on buildings that already exist, or in Madrid, which aspire too to expedite procedures. In Vancouver (Canada) they have decided to go one step further and create a kind of ‘XL laboratory’ to answer a key question: Would the residential crisis be alleviated if we reduced bureaucracy and were more flexible with buildability? An impossible market. Living in Vancouver is not easy. Not at least if you don’t have a generous salary and you aspire to stay in a (more or less) well-located and (more or less) comfortable home. a study disclosed by Frontier Center shows that the British Columbia city deals with one of the least affordable markets on the planet. Canadian families who want to purchase a property need, on average, to invest the equivalent of 10.8 full years of gross income. And that for a ‘normal’ cost house. Globally, it is only surpassed by Hong Kong, Sydney, San Jose and Adelaide. The situation in Vancouver is actually worse than in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York or any other large conurbation in North America. The rental market does not offer much comfort either. According to Zillow Rentalsthe average income is close to 2,900 dollars and last year it was above 3,000. Against this backdrop, the authorities have set the goal of injecting into the market 83,000 new homes in the coming years. You will find more infographics at Statista And what is the reason? Beyond the imbalance between supply and demand or the arrival of immigrants with an investment mentality, a few days ago, in a column published in The New York TimesBinyamin Appelbaum mentioned another key factor: excessive bureaucratic rigidity and regulatory blockage, a problem that is not exclusive to Canada. “Cities have largely lost the power to approve projects. To prevent officials from acting against the public interest, we have taken away the power to act in its favor,” regrets Appelbaumveteran reporter The New York Times and specialist in economics and business. “We are so committed to justice that we have lost sight of the injustice of inaction.” “Restore affordability”. In his analysis, the expert recalls the construction limitations imposed in coastal cities like Vancouver in the 1960s, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, the structural housing deficit (in 2023 it was estimated that Canada needed 3.5 million of extra homes by 2031 to “restore affordability”) and tension in the rental market. In the specific case of Vancouver, the geographical limitations of the city are added, constrained between mountains to the north, the ocean to the west and the border with the United States to the south. Also the characteristics of its urban planning, with a large weight of small properties. Houses, gardens… and skyrocketing prices. “The biggest problem is that Vancouver is a city of single-family homes. It has an imposing skyline in the center, but, if we see it from the air, the vast majority of the land is occupied by houses surrounded by grass,” comment Appelbaum. He is not the only one who highlights this peculiarity of the Canadian metropolis. In his chronicle he cites another expert, Alex Hemingway, senior economist at BC Policy Solutions, who questions this use of land in a city with residential m2 skyrocketing and rents through the roof. Appelbaum even cites specific cases in which apartment towers have given way to mansions, which further reduces the housing stock. A laboratory called Senakw. Despite this context, for a few years Vancouver has hosted a special project: in the heart of the city, near English Baythere is a wide strip of land 10.48 acres (just over four hectares) in which large apartment towers are being built. What’s more, the objective is to build one of the residential neighborhoods there with greater density from all over Canada: around 6,000 homes spread across 11 towers. His name is Sen̓áḵw and it is much more than theory or a plan drawn up on paper. The first building of the initial phase (which will encompass 1,049 homes spread over three towers of 27, 32 and 40 floors) is almost ready and the idea was for its first tenants to move in at the end of May. The Realist precise that the promoters want to finish the second block in the summer and the third before 2027. How is it possible? Very easy. Because Senakw is not just another real estate development. In fact (and this is the key) the 4.4 hectares it covers enjoy a special status that free it from the regulatory straitjacket that limits construction in other neighborhoods in Canada. The reason: that land does not depend on the Vancouver authorities, but on the Squamishan indigenous people who occupied the land long before the first Western settlers arrived. The land, located on the south bank of False Creek, was home to one of the 23 ancestral populations of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Stélmexw, but in 1913 the natives residing there were evicted “by force”. Although the British initially recognized the area as a native reserve, the value of the land led the provincial government to pressure their families to leave in the early 20th century. Their offer was very simple: either accept the payments offered or risk be left with nothing. Then the Government burned their homes. That episode gave rise to a decades-long lawsuit that ended in 2003when justice returned 4.4 hectares to the Squamish Nation. “More than buildings”. A decade and a half after that historic ruling, in 2019, the Squamish Nation voted in favor of developing a residential project on the land and thus creating “a legacy” for the next generations of natives. The result is Senakw, an ambitious project of 6,000 homes spread … Read more

Previously, at the G7 meetings, the focus was on world leaders. Now the protagonists are Amodei, Altman and Hassabis

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This week the edition was held number 52 of the G7 summit. Representatives of the seven largest world powers debated Ukraine, the Middle East, or rare earths, as expected. What was not so expected is that the true protagonists of the event were not those world leaders, but the directors of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google or Mistral who participated in the other great debate of our time: the future of AI. Power changes hands (a little). Jessica Brandt, of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)—an American think tank— defined the situation with a powerful phrase: “We are seeing a change in who gets a seat at the table, and a sign of where power lies.” Exceptional guests. This expert commented on how today states need to have AI companies as allies. What has happened with Anthropic and the Pentagon first and with Claude Fable 5 They then demonstrate how AI has become a weapon for country governments. One that no one wants to do without, so the leaders of the main Western AI companies have been invited to contribute to a debate that has become crucial for the future. The courtship of Amodei, Altman and Hassabis. Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic) and Demis Hassabis (CEO of Google DeepMind) were the three great highlights of a group of technology executives that also included Arthur Mensch, CEO of the French startup Mistral or Alexandr Wang, head of AI at Meta. World leaders courted these managers: Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, met with Mensch, for example, and Amodei did it with Macronand Hassabis, Altman and the aforementioned Amodei were part of a working lunch in which Donald Trump or Emmanuel Macron were among others. Technological dependence. The situation reflects a palpable reality: the G7 leaders meet to close all types of geopolitical agreements, but they depend completely on the private infrastructure and the hardware and software of big technology. The top leaders are clear that we must get along with these companies, but the balance of power is certainly delicate: the recent US veto of Fable 5 is a demonstration. Can countries appropriate their companies’ technology and control it? AI as a weapon. Recent announcements of AI models with advanced cybersecurity capabilities such as Claude Mythos Preview and Mythos 5 or GPT-5.5 Cyber ​​have made companies and governments noticeably concerned. Europe, for example, already complained having been set aside when Anthropic allowed some companies to use Mythos Preview. The US goes to its own. Emerson Brooking, a partner at the Atlantic Council, explained on CNBC how export controls on Anthropic models “have changed everything.” And he added that “Several G7 countries have previously alluded to the need for sovereign investments in AI, but it has always been assumed that these would take place in conjunction with access to the US technological stack. Now the US has indicated its willingness to cut off access to its AI technology both to the G7 and even to its treaties with allied powers.” Companies above governments? Advanced AI models are becoming in their own right one of the most desired and desired resources by not only companies, but also governments that are realizing what is at stake. He world geopolitical panorama already faced a similar situation with the development of nuclear weapons: only some countries can manufacture and deploy them. Digital divide on the horizon. AI is more diffuse, because models (especially open ones) are filtered, copied, and derived versions emerge from them. But one thing is certain: the data centers on which these models run are mostly under the control of companies from the US and China. Nuclear power offered deterrence, but AI can create a huge digital divide between those who control it and those who can only hope to use it. In Xataka | Claude Fable 5 has made it very clear what the big problem facing Europe is: AI is a weapon and it has none

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