Mobile Tech & Gadgets

that of the US trying to find it before the rest of the powers

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What could perfectly be the beginning of a work of fiction framed in a novel or a film, is taking place right now in some remote part of the planet. The episode of the GBU-39a bomb of American origin, lost somewhere in Beirut, has sparked a silent race between Washington, Lebanon and, potentially, Russia, China and Iran. The loss that can alter a strategic balance. What, on the surface, might seem like a mere failure to detonate a guided bomb becomes a matter of the highest strategic priority when the device in question belongs to one of the most important families of precision munitions. studied, valuable and restricted of the American arsenal. According to JPostthe bomb fell during the attack that killed Hezbollah’s military commander, Ali Tabatabaiand when it did not explode, it was made available to anyone who managed to access it before the American or Israeli teams. Washington solicitous immediately to the Lebanese Government for its recovery, aware that, if it reached the hands of Russia, China, Iran or even Hezbollah, the loss would be much greater than a simple lost device. It would be a direct access to decades of researchadvanced composite materials, guidance algorithms and electronic architecture whose reproduction could transform the ability of various powers to counter or replicate the American model of surgical strike. These types of incidents, in fact, it’s not newbut its context (a capital burned by regional tensions and the active presence of actors with the technical capacity to exploit the discovery) makes it an exceptional threat. A small bomb with huge implications. The GBU-39 is a glider bomb small diameter designed to combine range, penetration and millimeter accuracy within a compact body. just 110 kilos. Its operational concept is simple but devastating: when launched, it deploys wings that allow it to glide up to about 110 kilometers even without an engine, keeping the launching aircraft out of enemy defensive range. Its GPS and inertial guidance achieves errors of less than a meter, which reduces the number of ammunition needed for an attack and increases the survival of the device. The relationship between weight and damage generated is what has made it a benchmark: thanks to its highly efficient warhead, it can destroy reinforced structures without having to resort to much larger bombs. Its size allows an F-35 transport up to eight in its internal hold without compromising its radar signature, and for a single aircraft to carry out multiple attacks in a single sortie. That’s why the United States strictly controls its export, limiting it to close partners and technologically reliable family members. Loading a Gbu39 Washington’s fear. The American concern lies not in the explosive (easy to replicate), but in what the bomb hides: miniaturized sensors, lightweight and resistant composite materials, navigation and data fusion algorithms, microelectronics designed to survive thermal and vibrational stress, and a guidance system robust against interference. All this represents billions in R&D accumulated over two decades. Whether Russia or China could examine an intact GBU-39 would mean accelerate your capacity to improve anti-radar systems, develop countermeasures against precision attacks or even integrate equivalent technologies into their own arsenals of gliding bombs, which are advancing today but still lack American refinement. For Iran or Hezbollah, access to the bomb would have a additional value: would allow studying how to degrade American precision in an electronic warfare scenario, or even replicate part of the design in local munitions. A race against time. The United States has already experienced similar episodes that fuel its current reaction. In 2022, after the crash of an F-35C In the South China Sea, the Navy mobilized an urgent deep-sea recovery operation to prevent the device, with its AESA radarits distributed sensors and its stealth coating, will end up in the hands of Beijing. China itself denied interest, but the precedent from 2001 (when an American EP-3 made an emergency landing in Hainan and its equipment was inspected for months) made it clear that every opportunity for technological dismantling is taken advantage of without nuances. The possibility of a perfectly good bomb resting in a Beirut neighborhood, accessible to state and non-state actors, reproduces this pattern in an environment much more chaotic and close to the territory of pro-Iranian groups. Geopolitics of a lost artifact. For Israel, the lost bomb represents a direct operational risk: its technology in the hands of Hezbollah would allow the design of local countermeasures adapted to its mode of attack. For the United States, the problem is much broader: the proliferation of sensitive knowledge that can fuel Russian military modernization in the midst of a war of attrition, accelerate the Chinese transition towards highly efficient guided munitions or reinforce the Iranian reverse engineering ecosystem. For Russia, China or Iran, however, the discovery would be a capacity multiplierespecially in electronic warfare and in the development of long-range gliding munitions, key in future conflicts. And for Lebanon, caught between American, Israeli and Iranian pressures, the return or not of the GBU-39 becomes a deeply political actalmost inevitably interpreted as a gesture of alignment on a board where every piece counts. Strategic consequences. He incident reveals an inconvenient truth: in modern warfare, a single unexploded device can be equivalent to thousands of pages of classified documentation. The proliferation of gliding bombs (from Russia to China via Türkiye or Iran) means that competition is no longer just about launching ever more precise ammunition, but about preventing the adversary from understanding how to do it the same. If the lost GBU-39 ends up recovered by the United States, the episode will likely remain an anecdote. But if not, its impact could feel in development of new interference systems, in stealth attack doctrines, in the precision of Chinese gliding bombs, in the resilience of the Americans or even in the behavior of the Israeli air defense. Image | Master Sgt. Lance Cheung, Ministerie van Defensie, Picryl In Xataka | No one has seen Israel’s atomic arsenal. And that’s because Israel has an … Read more

The premises that were occupied by the business reopen as tourist houses and apartments

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“That’s one and there’s another one. See that one over there? It was a bar. Now it has four rooms in it.” A neighbor speaks de Vallecas and what he points his finger to are street-level premises that once housed fruit shops, haberdasheries, drugstores, grocery stores, pharmacies or bank branches and have now mutated into homes. Some of them are home to families who have resigned themselves to going about their daily lives in spaces that, warn from a neighborhood association in the area, they are poorly ventilated. Others are dedicated to a business juicier: vacation rental. It is the umpteenth example of the tourism from Madrid. A neighborhood in transformation. The Puente de Vallecas district is changing. And in a way that does not convince a good part of its neighbors. Over the last few years, people who go about their daily lives there have found that premises that previously housed neighborhood businesses, such as fruit shops or bakeries, have lowered the blinds to reopen, converted into something very different. In what? Housing. Or (increasingly) tourist accommodation, spaces designed for millions of tourists who visit Madrid every year. The residents of Vallecas know this from the flow of tourists they see through the streets because it is not strange that the new tourist apartments located on ground floors operate 100% virtually: customers make their reservations through platforms such as Booking, pay and access through code opening systems or the padlock boxes that have become so popular in other destinations. “It is increasing”. The phenomenon is striking enough to have caught the attention of Europa Press, which recently visited the Puente de Vallecas for talks with its inhabitants and some neighborhood associations. The nuances change, but not the discourse: all the people interviewed by the agency agree that the spaces left free by the businesses that close in the area are ‘reborn’ converted into homes, either for families or (increasingly) for tourists. “It’s increasing,” Javier Moral recognizesfrom the Dona Carlota de Numancia Neighborhood Association. The emphasis is not only on this reconversion of spaces at street level, but on what it represents for the life of the neighborhood. Occupied by tourists… and families. In Moral’s opinion, new homes often do not meet “habitability conditions”, which leads him to be suspicious of the real effectiveness of habitability cells. Europa Press explains that within these converted premises you can find tourists who demand cheaper accommodation than those advertised in the heart of Madrid (without giving up being just a few minutes from Atocha station), but also families conditioned by the price escalation of the rent. The problem, Jorge Nacarino insistsfrom the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid, is that “many times” these apartments “do not meet sufficient requirements due to size or ventilation.” The trend is more important than it may seem at first glance because it does not just represent a change in use. By replacing hairdressers, shoe stores or pharmacies with tourist apartments, the neighborhood loses neighborhood “meeting points” and forces residents to travel further and further away to find basic services, such as supermarkets or a bank. The arrival of tourists low cost encourages the opening of new businesses, but above all they are self-service laundries or convenience stores. fast food. Far beyond Vallecas. The change in the use of commercial basements in neighborhoods such as Palomeras Bajas, Entrevías, San Diego or Nueva Numancia is striking, but Puente de Vallecas is not the only area that is seeing how tourism transforms its landscape. not long ago we told you how a company had transformed an old bank office into a public bathroom in the historic center of Madrid. The business ended up going bankrupt, but its objective was clear: to nourish itself avalanche of tourists who visit the city. Precisely to alleviate the effects of growing tourist pressure, the Reside Plan prevents transforming commercial basements into apartments for tourists in the historic center or converting premises into homes on the main tertiary roads. In the case of Puente de Vallecas, this shields certain areas. “Low quality”. Beyond Madrid, other cities that receive thousands of tourists every year, such as Malaga or Santiago, have noted similar changes. In the first, Malaga, the City Council prepared a report which warns that “tourist pressure can cause the expulsion of native and value-added businesses” that end up being “replaced by souvenir shops and other businesses oriented exclusively to tourists.” The report does not stop there and also warns of the creation of “illegal or low-quality accommodation.” In the Galician capital, another study has confirmed that if at the beginning of the 1990s the historic center housed some 645 businesses aimed at residents (grocery stores, clothing and furniture stores, kiosks, drugstores, pharmacies…) today there are only 202. What’s more, food stores as such have collapsed more than 70% during that period. It is not something exceptional. In other cities, such as Valencia, what they call “tourist cages”lodgings for visitors, gated and at street level. Images | Wikipedia and Daquella Manera (Flickr) Via | Europa Press In Xataka | Northern Spain has been complaining about mass tourism for years. Asturias has discovered the bitter consequences of losing it

The MacBook Air M4 had a good price on Black Friday, but now it’s cheaper: so you can get it on sale

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During Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday we could see very good offers on some Apple devices, but in the Cyber ​​Week At PcComponentes we have found an even better deal: the MacBook Air M4 go down to the 849 euros when adding it to cart. The price difference is not very high, but if we were planning to buy this computer we can get an additional discount of 10 euros compared to the price it had in recent weeks. A powerful and light laptop He MacBook Air M4 It is one of the devices with the best quality-price ratio within the Apple brand, especially with this offer. It is a good laptop—one of the best options, even—if what we are looking for is a computer solvent both to work and to study at home or away. {“videoId”:”x9fnll2″,”autoplay”:true,”title”:”macbook-air-m4″, “tag”:””, “duration”:”55″} And in addition to being powerful, it is a very light computer, since weighs only 1.24 kg. In relation to the latter, we are talking about the model that incorporates a 13.6-inch screen along with 16 GB of unified memory and 256 GB of internal storage. On the other hand, one of the key points is that this laptop comes with the M4 chipwhich offers good performance at practically all times. It is also worth noting that the computer comes with a battery that offers a theoretical autonomy of up to 18 hours video playback. In Xataka Consum sells a V16 beacon with which you can comply with the new DGT regulations starting January 1 You may also be interested Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images |Javier PenalvaApple In Xataka |MacBook Air M4 vs MackBook Air M3: these are the main differences between the two models In Xataka |MacBook Air Vs MacBook Pro: we explain which one to choose (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The MacBook Air M4 had a good price on Black Friday, but now it’s cheaper: so you can get it on sale was originally published in Xataka by Alberto Garcia .

There are 500 million users who could perfectly upgrade to Windows 11. The problem is that they don’t want to

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If you are reading this and still using Windows 10you are at risk. Microsoft a month and a half ago ended the official support period for this operating system that was launched in 2015. The curious thing is that what should be happening is not happening. Dell as an example of what is happening in the world. Dell COO Jeff Clarke recently participated in an interview at The Motley Fool and they asked him for his vision on how the end of Windows 10 would affect the migration of users to Windows 11. That’s when he confessed that all his expectations came crashing down. The end of Windows 10 pointed to the growth of Windows 11. In fact, Clarke explained that before it happened he was very confident that this end of the cycle would lead people to buy a new PC or install Windows 11 on their computers. However, the executive indicated that they have realized that the adoption of Windows 11 is between 10 and 12 points below what happened with previous generations: people are not updating to this operating system as they expected. 500 million users simply skip updating. Clarke’s estimate is that there are about 1.5 billion devices (PCs and laptops) running Windows, and that’s where he made the most disturbing statement: “There are about 500 million PCs capable of running Windows 11 that have not been updated. And we have another 500 million that are four years old and cannot run Windows 11. All of them pose a huge opportunity to upgrade to Windows 11.” And yet, they don’t do it, or what is the same: A third of global Windows users do not have a PC officially compatible with Windows 11 and cannot directly upgrade Another third have a PC compatible with Windows 11 but users simply They have chosen not to do so. If it works, don’t touch it? For many users, including business users, the unwritten rule is often precisely “if it works, don’t touch it.” This is especially delicate in companies, because they may depend on legacy systems and if they update to new versions, conflicts may arise that affect the operations of the business itself. And still… A colossal security hole. Once again, what is really worrying about this is that although these PCs and laptops are working correctly, if they are based on Windows 10 or previous versions of Windows, they are absolutely exposed to all kinds of security flaws. At any time, these PCs could become victims of malware that turns them into members of a botnet, or of ransomware that prevents us from accessing our data unless we pay a ransom. This is already bad for individual users, but for companies the risk is enormous. A ray of hope. Here we just have to wait for users to realize that updating their equipment is important and relatively easy. In fact, on officially compatible devices this is basically a matter of clicking the “Next” button when running the update wizard. If your device is not compatible, there is a trick. On computers that theoretically do not meet the conditions—such as, for example, that do not have native support for TPN 2.0—there are not excessive problems either, because it is possible to “trick” Windows with a command or even with the use of a modified version of Windows 11. Come on, although it seems that you cannot update to Windows 11, the most normal thing is that in reality yes you can. And of course, there is Linux. If for some reason what users don’t want is to upgrade to Windows 11 because they don’t like it, the options are there in the form of Linux distributions. It seems that this path is being chosen by an already notable number of users, and this is demonstrated by the fact that, for example, Zorin OS—a fork of Ubuntu—has seen its distribution Zorin OS 18which arrived just at the time when Windows 10 was no longer officially supported, has been downloaded more than a million times in the last few days. In Xataka | If you have an old PC, there is an effective alternative to Windows 11 requirements and bloatware: this is how Flyoobe works

NASA needed to get to the Moon and had a problem with an insulating material. So it was put in the hands of the surfers

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Now that we are immersed in the space race to reach Mars, it is worth looking back to see one of the most surprising anecdotes of the other race with which the United States achieved taking man to the Moon for the first time. And to achieve this they did not hesitate to use all available resources, from their best scientists to their best… surfers? Although it may seem like a joke, it took surfers to perfect the Saturn Vthe space rocket with which the Apollo missions took off between 1967 and 1973. The POT He had created a honeycomb-shaped insulator for his rocket, and needed specialists in the use of honeycomb-shaped materials… like that of the surfboards of the time. This story It was kept secret for years. But even though it ended up coming to light after a NASA engineer told it in an interview, it remains one of the most curious and unknown anecdotes of the space race. There are also references to it in documentaries such as one of the chapters of ‘Moon Machines’, available at YouTube. Surfers at NASA The second stage of the Saturn V, the S-II, was built by National American Aviation (NAA) in Seal Beach, California. It was composed almost exclusively of two tanks of oxygen and liquid hydrogen that, for logistical reasons, had to be placed almost close together and separated only by a thin layer of aluminum. But there was a problem, that the liquid hydrogen had to be kept at a temperature of about 20º above absolute zero, so They had to create a new insulator to cover your tank. They created one in the shape of a honeycomb, since the hexagonal design is the strongest and lightest in nature and we have been using it for thousands of years, but they could not get the insulating layer to stay stuck to the aluminum. Fortunately for the NAA their facilities were in one of the surfing capitals on the west coast, and their engineers realized that the surfers They also used honeycomb-shaped materials in their boards. They were therefore more experienced experts than any scientist when it came to dealing with these types of insulators, which is why they hired a few to design an effective way to apply it to the tanks. The surfers recommended applying the insulation with sprays with a foam that solidified forming hexagonal cells. The idea worked, the NAA finished the S-II, which was assembled with the rest of the parts of the Saturn V. The rocket took 24 astronauts to the Moon without any loss of useful shell, having only engine problems with Apollo 6 and Apollo 13. Image | POT In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history? In Xataka | The far side of the Moon hid an icy secret. We finally know why it is so different from what we see

Russian oil never stopped arriving in Europe and this 30-year-old German knows it well because he has earned millions by supporting the system.

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JR Ewing, the oil magnate dallasused to repeat that “the essential thing in this business was to always be one step ahead.” If I lived in 2025, I probably wouldn’t be wearing a Texan hat: I’d be a trader in my late 30s with a laptop, a rented office in Dubai, and a German passport. And perhaps he would look a lot like Christopher Eppinger, the young man who, according to an extensive report in the Financial Timeshas managed to become a millionaire by speculating with sanctioned Russian oil while Europe proclaimed from the rooftops that it was breaking dependence on the Kremlin. Because while Brussels talked about “energy sovereignty” and announced price caps, a parallel ecosystem of nomadic traders, ghost fleets and opaque companies continued to move millions of barrels away from the official radar. In that underground of the global economy, Eppinger found his opportunity. The sanctioned oil never stopped flowing; It simply stopped being visible. And he knew how to make it profitable. When a door closes. Christopher Eppinger, marked since childhood by the chapters of dallas that he saw with his grandmother, he found in the war a window to get rich. The young German moved with the same logic that much more veteran intermediaries have used for decades: special purpose companies in the United Arab Emirates, triangulated operations with India or China, sales contracts for discounted crude oil and the logistics of a ghost fleet that operates on the margins of maritime law. While European governments presented sanctions in solemn press conferences, he took advantage of every crack in the system to buy low and resell high. He didn’t need his own ships, or infrastructure, or even physically touching a barrel: it was enough to know where the opportunities were and who didn’t want to look too closely. Showing an uncomfortable truth. The story of this young German is not an anecdote, but evidence that the sanctioning system never acted as intended. Organization reports like Public Eye show that, between 2023 and 2024 alone, newly created companies or companies relocated to Dubai accounted for more than half of the Russian oil exported by sea, displacing traditional centers such as Switzerland and Singapore. According to Bloombergkey figures in the energy trade, such as Murtaza Lakhani, helped Rosneft reconfigure its export chains through the Emirates to keep flows active despite sanctions. And while much of Europe tried to break ties with Moscow, some countries —like Hungary and Slovakia— took advantage of exceptions to continue receiving crude oil and gas through the Druzhba pipeline. Energy dependence, far from being broken, fragmented into a more chaotic, less transparent and more vulnerable system. In this environment, profiles like Eppinger’s are not only possible: they are almost inevitable. The recipe for enrichment. Eppinger’s method follows a clear logic that the Financial Times details precisely. The first step is to move to Dubai, which has become the “Desert Ireland”thanks to minimal taxation, thousands of special purpose companies created in record time and a confidentiality regime that allows operations without revealing the beneficial owner. The United Arab Emirates does not apply sanctions against Moscow and serves as a perfect platform to move cargo, contracts and dividends without European surveillance. The second pillar is the ghost fleet: hundreds of aging, poorly insured oil tankers, with registrations in opaque countries and with transponders that turn off just when the ship approaches a Russian cargo. These ships They are the heart of parallel trade which has kept Russia exporting above the $60 limit imposed by the G7. The third consists of the Offshore transfers and triangulations. The scheme is simple: buy cheap Russian crude, transfer it to another tanker in international waters, mix it or rename it “Malaysian” or “Indian”, and resell it at an international price. A digital business, fast and — above all — difficult to track. And the fourth element is the ambiguous tolerance of the West. As Bloomberg has detailedthe United States avoided acting harshly for months to avoid causing a global rise in the price of oil. In the EU, exceptions and loopholes allowed non-European companies, although controlled by Europeans, to operate without restrictions. Eppinger moved precisely in that gray space: a legally ambiguous but economically explosive territory. The great gray void where everything is possible. The short answer is: it depends. The long answer is more uncomfortable. According to regulators cited in the different sources, an operation can be technically legal if Russian oil is purchased below the price ceiling, transported to a country that does not apply sanctions and is executed from a legally established entity outside the EU. Switzerland even recognizedaccording to Public Eye— that subsidiaries of Swiss companies established in Dubai are not subject to Swiss sanctioning legislation, as long as they are formally “independent.” This legal architecture allows traders like Eppinger to act without violating the letter of the law, even if they clearly violate its spirit. The question is not so much whether what you do is legal, but why it is possible to do it. Will there be consequences? The cracks in the system are beginning to produce visible effects. On the military front, Ukraine has expanded the war towards Russian energy infrastructure: attacking refineries thousands of kilometers from the front and disabled tankers linked to sanctioned crude oil trading. Russia has lost around 13% of its refining capacity and several regions have suffered queues and gasoline rationing, according to the Financial Times. On the diplomatic and economic level, according to BloombergWashington is already studying specific sanctions against intermediaries in the Emirates, while the United Kingdom has begun to penalize marketing companies with opaque property registered in Dubai. In Europe, pressure is growing on countries that continue to receive Russian energy by land, such as Hungary and Slovakia, identified as leakage points in the system. Eppinger’s business, like that of many others, could have its days numbered if the regulatory fence tightens. For now, it is still profitable. Russia gets richer while Europe … Read more

Verifactu was about to drop. The Government has just postponed it

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The Government has delayed until 2027 the obligation to Verifactu, the electronic billing system that the Tax Agency wanted to impose on self-employed workers and SMEs from January 2026. Companies that pay Corporate Tax will now have until January 2027 to adopt it. The self-employed and small businesses, until July 2027. Why is it important. This is not a technical or administrative measure but a political concession disguised as pragmatism. Sánchez has openly admitted it in RAC1framing it as one of his “non-compliances” with Junts that he now intends to resolve. The system seeks to certify each invoice issued using approved software, guaranteeing its authenticity and allowing the Treasury immediate control. Fines for non-compliance can reach 50,000 euros. But only 8% of self-employed workers and SMEs had it implemented in mid-November, with another 15% in process. Between the lines. The postponement reveals three uncomfortable truths for the Executive: The Administration has designed a system that not even it itself can implement in a timely manner. The figure of 8% adoption at the threshold of the deadline is an obvious operational failure. Junts has more veto power over Spanish fiscal policy than the PSOE would like to acknowledge. We are not even talking about a budget negotiation, but rather the ability to delay legislation already approved. The “Catalan business community” – the euphemism that Sánchez uses – functions as a lever of effective political pressure when other groups, such as ATA, They had been demanding the same thing for weeks without success. Yes, but. Lorenzo Amor, from ATA and CEOE, hailed the announcement as a victory for “common sense”. Maybe it is. But that common sense has arrived not through technical merit or business pressure, but through mere parliamentary arithmetic. The relief is real for all self-employed workers who did not have the resources or time to digitize their billing in a few weeks. The question is whether in 2027 they will be more prepared or if we will see the same script again. Go deeper. Verifactu doesn’t die, it’s just postponed. The Treasury’s objective remains the same: full traceability of each transaction, immediate control and reduction of tax fraud. In theory it is a more modern and efficient system. In practice, it is also an administrative burden that many small businesses cannot assume without help. In Xataka | Starting in January, the Treasury will look at Bizum with different eyes: you will be able to pay for dinners, but you will not receive family donations Featured image | PexelsXataka

Google hit the red button when ChatGPT came upon it. Now it is OpenAI who has pressed it, according to WSJ

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Sam Altman has activated high alert on OpenAI. Just like share From Wall Street Journal, the company’s CEO announced this Monday in an internal memo that the company enters “code red” to improve ChatGPTthe tool that has catapulted the company to stardom but that now sees its rivals closing the gap at breakneck speed. what’s happening. OpenAI is postponing several important projects to focus all its resources on improving the daily ChatGPT experience, according to the internal memo to which WSJ has had access. According to Altman, the chatbot urgently needs advances in personalization, speed, reliability and the ability to answer a broader range of questions. Among the postponed projects are initiatives to include advertising in the free version of ChatGPT, AI agents for health and purchases (the latter was announced very recently), and Pressa personal assistant in development. why now. The pressure comes mainly from Google. Your model Gemini 3released last month, has outperformed OpenAI in industry benchmarks and sent the Mountain View giant’s stock soaring. Just like assures In the middle, Gemini’s monthly active users went from 450 million in July to 650 million in October, a meteoric growth that sets off all the alarms at OpenAI. Although ChatGPT maintains the lead with approximately more than 800 million weekly users, the speed at which Google is gaining ground is worrying. The underlying problem. OpenAI is in a delicate position. The company it is not profitable and it needs constant rounds of financing to survive, which puts it at a disadvantage compared to Google and other technology companies that can finance their investments with their own income. It’s also spending more aggressively than its main startup rival, Anthropic. According to their own financial projectionsOpenAI will need to reach revenues of approximately $200 billion to be profitable in 2030. All while being committed to investments of hundreds of billions in data centers. The last setbacks. The company has had a difficult time lately balancing the security of its chatbot with making it more attractive to users. The GPT-5 model Launched in August, it disappointed some users, who complained about its colder tone and problems answering simple math and geography questions. OpenAI had to update the model last month to make it warmer and better able to follow user instructions. OpenAI’s response. According to point In the middle, Altman has established daily calls for those responsible for improving ChatGPT and has encouraged temporary team transfers. WSJ assures that the company uses three color codes: yellow, orange and red, to describe the different levels of urgency necessary to address problems. According to the outlet, prior to this “code red”, OpenAI had declared a “code orange” in its effort to improve the chatbot. Nick Turley, Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, stated in X that ChatGPT represents 70% of global AI-assisted activities and 10% of search activities. An unexpected script twist. This represents a radical change compared to three years ago, when it was Google who declared its own code red in response to the threat posed by ChatGPT. And after a groundbreaking Google I/O Last May, those from Mountain View have witnessed brutal growth in all the directions in which the AI ​​race is currently pointing, with improvements in their chatbot, the deployment of countless AI agents, improvements in their applications and more. Now it seems that it is OpenAI who must defend its position. And now what. Altman advertisement that next week OpenAI will launch a new reasoning model that, according to internal evaluations, surpasses Google’s Gemini 3. However, he acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to be done in the everyday chatbot experience. Cover image | OpenAI and Xataka Android In Xataka | China already has an army of 5.8 million engineers. His new plan involves accelerating doctorates

DeepSeek has launched its new reasoner model. It’s free and beats GPT-5

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DeepSeek has introduced DeepSeek-V3.2 and DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale. They are AI models that combine complex reasoning with the ability to use tools autonomously. Why is it important. The company of Hangzhou claims that DeepSeek-V3.2 matches the performance of GPT-5 in multiple reasoning tests. The Speciale model It reaches the level of Gemini-3 Pro and has achieved gold medals in international mathematics and computer science Olympiads. The context. DeepSeek surprised the world in January with a revolutionary model for efficiency and cost. Now it ups the ante with open source systems that throw down the gauntlet directly to OpenAI and Google in reasoning capabilities. Technical innovation. DeepSeek-V3.2 integrates “thinking” directly into tool usage for the first time. You can reason internally while running web searches, operating a calculator, or writing code. The system works in two modes: With visible reasoning (similar to the reasoning seen in ChatGPT and company). Or without any reasoning. The chain of thought persists between tool calls and is restarted only when the user sends a new message. How they have achieved it. Researchers have developed ‘DeepSeek Sparse Attention (DSA)’, an architecture that greatly reduces the computational cost of processing long contexts. The model maintains 671 billion total parameters but activates only 37 billion per token. In figures. DSA cuts the cost of inference in long contexts by approximately 50% compared to the previous dense architecture. The system processes 128,000 context windows tokens in production. Reinforcement training has consumed more than 10% of the total pretraining count. The team has generated more than 1,800 synthetic environments and 85,000 tasks to train agent capabilities. The results. DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale has won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad 2025, the International Informatics Olympiad 2025, the ICPC World Finals 2025 and the Chinese Mathematical Olympiad 2025. Both models are available now. V3.2 works on app, web and API. V3.2-Speciale only by API, at least for now. Between the lines. DeepSeek has published the full weights and technical report of the training process. This transparency contrasts with what large American technology companies usually do. Even those that offer open source models such as Call, with an asterisk. The Chinese startup wants to demonstrate that open source systems can compete with the most advanced proprietary models. And it does so while continuing to reduce costs. Yes, but. The benchmarks Public settings do not always reflect performance on real-world tasks. Direct comparisons with GPT-5 either Gemini-3 Pro They depend on specific metrics that may not capture all relevant dimensions. Furthermore, the integration of tools in reasoner mode still needs to be tested in complex real-world use cases. The reduced cost is not as important if the quality of the responses does not hold up. In Xataka | DeepSeek Guide: 36 Features and Things You Can Do for Free with This AI Featured image | Solen Feyissa

Movistar, Orange and Vodafone are going to raise prices in 2026. You still have time to do something to avoid paying more

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Unfortunately for users, it has already become a tradition: every year around this time, the three operators begin to notify their customers of the price increases that they will come into force in January. And 2026 is not going to be an exception. The first to report it It was Movistarthen Orange followed and shortly after It was Vodafone’s turn. They are all preparing an update to their upward rates for the first weeks of 2026 that will directly impact the pockets of millions of households. The increase is not the same in all rates, but in some cases, it may mean pay up to 6 euros more per month. The good news is that we still have time to take measures to avoid it. It all depends on whether you are willing to continue paying for services that you may no longer need. Image: Xataka On January 8, Vodafone prices rise. Although last year Zegona, the owner of Vodafone Spain, allowed to avoid the inertia of the increases linked to the CPIin 2026 prices will rise again. And this time they will not be linked to the CPI, but will exceed the expected inflation (close to 3%) to reach an average of 4%. The increase affects almost everyone: from those who only have a mobile line, who will pay 1 euro more per month, to families with complete convergent packages, whose fee will increase between 3 and 5 euros per month. In addition, you will pay 1 extra euro for each additional line and another extra euro for each contracted streaming platform. Ancillary services such as Secure Net, One Number or MultiSIM maintain their prices. Orange rates rise on January 12. Orange packages will suffer a weighted average increase of around 3.8%. For example, customers who have contracted the Fiber pack with one or two unlimited lines will pay 5 euros more per month. Also those with the Cinema and Series package, both with one mobile line and two. Football fans will be worse off, since the Football and Cinema packages will increase by 6 euros per month, regardless of whether you have one or two mobile lines. Image: Movistar Movistar customers have their turn a day later. The customers who will notice the increase the most are those who have 1 Gbps fiber rates and unlimited mobile line services. For example, the 1 Gbps fiber and unlimited mobile package plus an additional line increases from 63 to 65 euros per month, and the option with two unlimited lines increases from 80 to 83 euros. The basic Movistar Plus+ package with deco increases by one euro, from 13 to 14 euros. What remains the same are the entry rates, such as the basic package with 600 Mbps Fiber and mobile with 60 GB, which remains at 53 euros per month. The date on which the new prices will come into effect is January 13, 2026. Why do operators raise prices? The justification for these price increases by Movistar, Orange and Vodafone is very similar and always revolves around investment and quality of service. As they are “premium” operators, they do not limit themselves to giving you connectivity, but offer the latest technologies (WiFi 7, 5G+, 10 Gbps fiber…) and an entire ecosystem of services, such as alarms, insurance, telemedicine, etc. To this we must add television with a decoder, agreements with third parties to integrate their content and the high cost of football in the case of Orange and Movistar. In fact, the three operators hide behind the increase in costs on the part of providers and their desire to continue offering varied and quality content. You have the right to cancel the contract. Operators are obliged to communicate any modification to the contract (a price increase is one) at least one month in advance of its entry into force. In all three cases, the new prices will be applied, as we have seen, in the first days of January. Hence, customers are now receiving the relevant notices. Even if you have a current contract, the unilateral modification of the conditions by the operator gives you the right to terminate the contract and change companies at no cost, as long as you do so before the date of entry into force of the new prices and that you are not paying for a device in installments. If you receive the notice and do nothing, the operator legally assumes that you accept the new conditions. Therefore, December is the perfect time to analyze your day-to-day needs and check the options you have both within your current operator. like in the competition. On mobile phones, for example, there is a golden rule that recommends hiring a rate that offers your average consumption plus a 20% margin. On fiber, you may be able to lower the speed, and on television, you may not need as many platforms or content packages. Cover image | Xataka In Xataka | Telefónica does not buy Vodafone or Digi for now, but it already has a plan: one in which mergers are necessary In Xataka | For the first time in decades, Telefónica can freely decide with whom it shares its network. And that changes the entire Spanish market

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