Mobile Tech & Gadgets

features, price and technical sheet

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A couple of years ago Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi Watch 2one of its first forays into watches with Wear OS. We liked it a lot and the truth is that for 200 euros it was a highly recommended device. Today. Within the framework of MWC 2026, the Chinese firm has announced its successor, the Xiaomi Watch 5a device that draws on the best watches we have seen to date and takes the leap to be more powerful, more premium and, following the strategy of premiumization of the company, also more expensive. And it is that he Xiaomi Watch 5 It costs 299.99 euros, but in exchange it offers one of the largest batteries we have seen in its segment thanks to carbon silicon, the most updated version of Wear OS and a fairly complete set of functions. With the introductions made, let’s get to know him better. Xiaomi Watch 5 technical sheet xiaomi watch 2 dimensions and weight 47 x 47 x 12.3 56 grams (without strap) belt 135-205mm screen 1.54 inch AMOLED Resolution 480 x 480 pixels 312dpi Brightness: up to 1,500 nits processor Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 BES2800 ram memory 2GB internal storage 32GB endurance 5ATM connectivity WiFi 2.4/5GHz Bluetooth 5.4 NFC compatibility Android 8.0 or higher battery 930mAh Xiaomi Surge Battery Magnetic charging sensors Optical heart rate sensor SpO2 Accelerometer Gyroscope ambient light electronic compass barometer sensor EMG sensor geopositioning Integrated GPS chip Double frequency L1+L5 GPS, Galileo, Glonass, Beidou, QZSS operating system Wear OS 6 others 160 sports modes Fall detection Heart rate monitoring Blood oxygen monitoring Sleep monitoring Stress monitoring Bluetooth calls Google Gemini Xiaomi HyperConnect price 299.99 euros This is how Xiaomi makes money – they attract you and trap you Solving the problem of watches with Wear OS Xiaomi Watch 5 | Image: Xataka Xiaomi has worked on its watch to give it a more refined look, with a huge 1.54 inch AMOLED panel that expands to practically the edge of the box. This one, in fact, is not much bigger than the previous model. It is more or less the same, with slight differences in thickness, but there is one detail that makes the difference: the frames. The Chinese firm has managed to reduce them to just 2.6 millimeters, which has allowed it to increase the diameter of the screen without the device growing in size. Minipoint for the company, which now mounts a 1.54-inch panel with 480 x 480 pixel resolution. However, the most appreciated thing will not be the size, but the maximum brightness, which is more than double that of the Xiaomi Watch 2: from 600 nits to 1,500 nits from HBM. Xiaomi Watch 5 | Image: Xataka Notable changes also in the engine, which now, following the trail marked by OnePlus, OPPO and Mobvoihas a dual processor architecture. The heavyweight is still the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 and it is the one that will be in charge of the most intensive processes. A low-power BES2800 chip will take care of the rest of the light tasks and stand-by functions. It’s a smart strategy that, historically, has worked very well. But the key to everything, what surely makes the difference, is the silicon-carbon battery. We have already seen this technology on mobile phones and some watches like the Huawei Watch GT 6 Proand the result is outstanding. Where before there was 495 mAh, now Xiaomi has managed to put a battery of 930mAh with which it promises up to six days of autonomy in smart mode, 18 if we use low consumption mode. It is, by far, one of the highest figures on the market, at least for now. Xiaomi Watch 5 | Image: Xataka The operating system is Wear OS 6 and, therefore, it has Google Gemini, Google Wallet and access to the Google Play Store aka Spotify apps, Google Maps, Youtube Music, etc. On the other hand, the notable sensors are the PPG, the IMU and the EMG. These last two sensors are used to detect special actions on the hands and wrists, such as pinching, rubbing two fingers, snapping, etc., so we can do things like reject calls or control the camera by making basic gestures. Versions and price of the Xiaomi Watch 5 Xiaomi Watch 5 | Image: Xataka He Xiaomi Watch 5 It can be purchased in black and green, the former having a dark-colored box and the latter having a silver finish. Its price does not change: 299.99 euros in both cases. Images | Xiaomi In Xataka | The best smartwatches (2026): their analyzes and videos are here

We have been filling the refrigerator with kefir and high-protein yogurts for years. It turns out that the solution was invented in the year 874

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For decades, the Mediterranean basin has held an absolute monopoly on nutritional health. They convinced us that olive oil, wheat and southern ferments were unbeatable. In the dairy aisle, this hegemony translated into the undisputed reign of Greek yogurt, a product that went from being a traditional food to becoming in the supermarket star thanks to its thick texture and high concentration of complete proteins. However, nutrition science has turned its sights toward much colder latitudes. Today, the undisputed protagonist of healthy diets, recommended by both sports nutritionists and metabolic researchers, does not come from Athens, but from Iceland. Is called skyrand although its appearance deceives us, it is rewriting the rules of what we consider a perfect breakfast. At first glance, the skyr It looks like some kind of ultra-creamy Greek yogurt, but it’s not technically a yogurt. Actually, it is about of a fresh, skimmed whipped cheese, made through a double fermentation process. From the Vikings to the supermarket shelf The history of this product begins with the first Viking settlements in Iceland, around the year 874. The Norwegian settlers who arrived on the island encountered an extreme climate and unfriendly lands. In that scenario, the skyr It became a real life insurance: a food ultra-concentrated in nutrients that allowed them to survive the harshest winters when there were hardly any resources. The traditional process starts with skimmed and pasteurized cow’s milk that is heated to 75ºC and cooled to 37ºC. Lactic acid bacteria are added to this base (such as Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus) and, crucially, rennet. After hours of fermentation, the product is carefully strained to eliminate the liquid whey. The result is a dense paste, with hardly any water, that requires three to four times more milk to produce than conventional yogurt. Today, the skyr has conquered supermarket shelves such as Lidl, Mercadona, Aldi or Alcampo. Nutritionist Blanca García-Orea points out that success in the supermarket lies in their clean labels: the best commercial options contain only two ingredients, pasteurized milk and lactic ferments, without added sugars or sweeteners. The clinical fascination with skyr It is based on its macronutrient profile. According to data collected by Healthlinea typical serving provides between 11 and 19 grams of protein, practically double that of a standard natural yogurt, while maintaining an almost non-existent level of fat (between 0% and 0.5%). But how exactly is it different from its direct competitors in the refrigerator? Nutritionist Laura Parada clears up the usual confusion between the skyrhe kefir and the yogurt. While the kefir stands out for a microbiota very diverse that includes yeasts and acetic bacteria, and normal yogurt It is based on lactic fermentation simple that leaves a light texture, the skyr It makes the difference because it is a fresh fermented cheese with a very high protein concentration and very thick texture. Added to this are other physiological advantages. The rigorous casting process of skyr eliminates approximately 90% of its lactose contentwhich allows many people with mild intolerance to consume it without experiencing digestive discomfort. At the micronutrient level, the portal Ingredia Food highlights that A 150-gram serving covers about 15-20% of the recommended daily intake of calcium, essential to protect against osteoporosis, and 19% of vitamin B2 (riboflavin), linked to the reduction of oxidative stress. What happens in your body when you eat it When you eat a tub of skyr, you’re giving your muscles exactly what they ask for. According to the magazine Nutrition & Metabolismits proteins are loaded with leucine and other key amino acids that trigger muscle synthesis. Basically, it’s an excellent tool for shielding lean mass when you’re looking to lose weight or prevent muscle from deteriorating with age. As if that were not enough, it takes away your hunger suddenly. The Aarhus University in Denmark did an experiment in 2024 pitting the classic breakfast of bread and jam against a bowl of skyr with oats. The conclusions of researcher Mette Hansen were resounding, the Nordic mix boosted mental concentration and satiety throughout the morning. Some women in the study were so full that they couldn’t even finish their portion. Science continues to find medical applications. Last year, the International Dairy Journal published a discovery very revealing about him skyr fermented with strains such as L. plantarum. It turns out that these formulations are capable of stopping blood glucose spikes after meals, while helping to reduce cholesterol and acting as a powerful shield against cellular inflammation. Not all the skyr it’s gold However, you have to put a magnifying glass on the shadows of any fashion product. That a container has the word printed skyr It does not make it a safe passage to comprehensive health. Magazines like Men’s Health warn that the industry is already marketing ultra-processed versions, such as ice cream skyrwhich although they provide protein, camouflage glucose syrup, fructose and added sugars in their ingredients. In addition, Healthline remember thatbeing made from cow’s milk, the skyr It is strictly not recommended for people with allergies to casein or whey protein, as it can trigger severe reactions. On the other hand, the debate about fat arises. Although the original version of skyr is applauded for being skimmed, a deep analysis that we did in Xataka We explain the historical demonization of dairy fat. Modern science is rehabilitating natural whole dairy products thanks to the “dairy matrix” (the membrane of the fat globule), which appears to have a cardiovascular protective effect and greater satiating power. This suggests that, although the skyr It is an excellent tool due to its protein density, completely dispensing with dairy fat in our diet based on ancient dogmas could be a mistake. The emergence of skyr in the global diet is not a marketing accident, but the convergence of an ancient tradition with the demands of modern metabolic medicine. Contemporary nutrition has stopped looking for shortcuts in laboratories to fixate on food matrices dense, real and fermented. Although it is not a magical food nor … Read more

Today its app has more than 6,000 million downloads and is still free and without ads

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There is software so good that it is difficult to believe that it is free because it constitutes an almost anachronistic technological rarity: an echo of that Internet that no longer exists, where valuable information ran through forums far from ruthless algorithms and the perennial interest in monetizing everything. VLC is probably the most extreme case: a free, ad-free, all-terrain player without a corporate owner that has been essential for anyone who watches videos for almost three decades. In figures. Some data that show the impressive evolution of the project in these 30 years: At CES 2025VLC announced two things: the arrival of AI subtitles and that the figure had risen to 6 billion downloads. In March 2024, the official download figure It was 5,000 million. Of those 6 billion downloads, 4.8 billion correspond to Windows. MacOS is much further away, with 380 million, according to data from the VideoLAN statistical system. The beginnings were difficult: in 2009 and after more than a decade of development, version 1.0.0 of VLC was published. A university project. VLC was born in 1996 at the École Centrale Paris, one of the great French technical schools. The VIA Centrale Réseaux computer club wanted to modernize the campus network, an outdated LAN that made any transfer very slow, but needed a technical argument to justify it. The solution was develop an application to broadcast and display network video that would consume enough bandwidth to make the update inevitable. More specifically, there were two programs: the VLS server (VideoLAN Server) and the VLC player client (VideoLAN Client). They were designed with a modular architecture to be able to adapt them to different operating systems without rewriting the entire code, something they would appreciate later. In 1998 they achieved the first successful broadcast and playback in MPEG-2 format. The liberation of being open source. In the beginning, VLC belonged to the university in a closed way, but the students struggled for years to convince the institution to release the project. In 2001, got it: Obtained the free and open source software license GNU General Public License. This decision was a turning point, a real catalyst for everyone from around the world to contribute, going from a university project to something in the community. Of course, when the Free Software Foundation published the new GPLv3, VLC did not update for a practical matter: I had too many collaborators and libraries to get the yes and along the way I would probably have worsened their compatibility. Goodbye to the Ecole. In 2009, VLC graduated from the École Centrale Paris and completely disassociated himself from the academic organization. Since then it has been managed by a non-profit organization, the VideoLAN Organization and which has one of the people who started the project as president, Jean-Baptiste Kempf. It was not a bed of roses. In 2010, VLC arrived on the Apple App Store, but a few months later He was removed due to problems with his license.. Its license at the time, GPLv2, required that the software be completely free of restrictions, something incompatible with Apple’s distribution conditions. The team had to relicense the VLC engine with a more permissive license (LGPL) compatible with App Store policies. Of course, it was a long and legally tortuous process (it required the consent of its authors). VLC finally returned to the Apple store in 2013. Advertising? No, thanks. VLC is free and has no ads by philosophy, as Kempf tells it in this video. For its co-creator, money can be a prison, a limitation if it becomes his main objective. In short: monetizing the most important thing means that the software and its users take a backseat. And there has been no shortage of offers. When we asked Jean Bastiste Kempf for these offers, he confirmed it to us: “We received several offers to buy VLC or to receive millions a year, but that meant adding some type of crapware either adware on users’ computers (changing the home page, inserting ads on web pages, toolbars, etc…), and we reject it. Basically, even if everyone does it, it’s making everyone’s life worse. It’s unethical, and we didn’t do it.” He summed up his philosophy in one sentence: “the search for money cannot be done at any price.” Your business model. The million dollar question if VLC does not have ads or charge a subscription or have premium payment options is: how does it make money? Essentially, in two ways: through donations from its users and with VideoLabsa business branch that has first class clients like Microsoft, Acer or Amazon. Despite its enormous volume of downloads, VLC maintains a light structure, since it is supported by a community of volunteers. In Xataka | 16 years ago a student from Barcelona was looking for an easy way to edit PDFs. The website he created is one of the most viewed on the internet Cover | Ibrahim Boran and By Axelle Manfrini (Wikipedia)

The United States has found how to protect its most vulnerable ships on the high seas: with escort drones

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The planet’s oceans and seas are anything but a pond of oil, and not precisely because of the climate: the Black Sea with the war between Russia and Ukrainethe Baltic Sea with hybrid warfare and ghost fleets, Strait of Hormuz tensions through which 20% of the world’s oil passes or the Red Sea crisiswith Houthi drones and missiles. And those are just some of the hot spots that cause logistics and merchant vessels to face serious problems in carrying out their functions. The possibility of sending the navy as a companion for those routes where the atmosphere is heated is obviously not an option. So the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has contracted to a company to solve it with an autonomous escort system with drones. Context. If the Strait of Hormuz is a strategic point for international trade, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is not far behind: 12% of world maritime trade passes through it, according to the Middle East Research Center. But since 2023, passing through there is a minefield, which has led to thousands of boats (according to Wikipedia citing Pentagon sources) follow an alternative route that involves going around all of Africa passing through the Cape of Good Hope. That’s 20,000 extra kilometers, ten more days of travel and the consequent expense in fuel. This specific case is not a mere example: it is what has led DARPA to make the decision to count on Raytheon to unclog this bottleneck as soon as possible, as explains the company’s president of Advanced Technology, Colin Whelan. Why is it important. Because 80% of world trade circulates by sea and there are a series of straits that are critical and that, in the event of conflict, act as bottlenecks due to their vulnerability. And the effects are immediate in the form of delays in supplies and prices. The protection of merchant ships to date required a naval escort in a slow, expensive operation and for which there are not enough troops to allocate them to that mission. What Pulling Guard proposes is autonomous protection without requiring extra crew or structural modifications. What is Raytheon? That company is not any: Raytheon is the arms division of the RTX group, the largest aerospace and defense company in the world, with 180,000 workers and $88 billion in turnover in 2025. With more than a century behind it and headquartered in Virginia, it has missiles such as the Patriot or the Tomahawk on its resume. It is one of the Pentagon’s Big Five contractors and is a regular in DARPA contracting. What is Pulling Guard. Pulling Guard is the system developed by Raytheon, a semi-autonomous platform towed by the ship it protects. From this, a drone operates with electro-optical and infrared sensors to detect potential threats and transmit information in real time to remote operators on the ground or on board. The latter are in charge of making decisions without the crew exposing themselves. It has two phases: in the first it is an advanced surveillance system and in the second it integrates weapons. Pulling Guard is neither a passive shield nor a preventive warning system: it is, in short, a light autonomous combat unit attached to a civilian ship. What we still don’t know. Beyond technical unknowns such as the budget, the phase schedule or the type of integrated weapons, this proposal raises two tricky questions: international law and gray areas. Without going any further, from issues such as what rules of engagement apply to the remote operator from the ground authorizing fire, who is legally responsible for the attack or what happens if the system acts in the waters of a third state. Not to mention something more mundane like flag registrations or insurance companies. Or something even more basic: does the ship lose its civilian status by carrying this system? In Xataka | The US Navy already knows how to fool enemy radars: drones that create ghost fleets In Xataka | The US is preparing a new radar for Greenland with one objective: to monitor every movement of Russia and China in the Arctic Cover | Raytheo

The big problem with putting robots everywhere is that they get lost. An engineer from Elche believes she has the solution

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It is no surprise that we see more and more robots in our daily lives: in a restaurant bringing orders to the table, in the field as a seasonal workermaking him courier delivery competition…and that’s not to mention its applications in automation on an industrial scale. Robots don’t need to rest, they don’t have labor rights, and they don’t complain. But they get lost. And that is a real, very common problem for which a research team from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche has found solution. The context. Autonomous robots need to know where they are to function and that does not always happen: when the location reference is lost, either because someone moves it, it is turned off or the environment changes without warning, the robot is unable to recover its position. Something as normal as running out of battery can be a technical drama. This phenomenon is not something isolated, in fact it even has a name in robotics: the “kidnapped robot problem“. Although we see more and more robots everywhere, this incident is a pending issue that has not been resolved in a robust way for decades. Without going any further, because resorting to GPS is something that can fail in settings such as indoors or near tall buildings. As deepens Míriam Máximolead author of the article: “It is a classic problem and very difficult to solve, especially in large environments.” The solution. What the team from the University of Elche has implemented is MCL-DLF, the acronym for Monte Carlo Localization – Deep Local Feature, a system that combines two technologies: on the one hand, a 3D LiDAR that emits laser pulses to draw a three-dimensional map of the environment similar to that of robot vacuum cleaners. On the other hand, an artificial intelligence that learns which elements of the environment are most useful for orientation. Why is it important. Because having a reliable location system is essential for any robotic deployment in real life: autonomous vehicles, delivery and logistics, assistance… its presence may be increasingly common, but it is still tremendously dependent on supervision: knowing where it is is essential for it to operate safely. The implemented method also introduces an important change: it is independent, in that it does not require external infrastructure to function like GPS, so its base is more robust and versatile in the face of different use scenarios in the real world. How it works. Its approach is hierarchical, so it first recognizes large structures and then fine details, similar to how people do. When you arrive at an unknown place, first you keep the essentials: what neighborhood you are in, for example. Then you look for more specific references to refine further. Furthermore, the system does not play everything on one card: it maintains several position hypotheses simultaneously and discards or refines them as the sensor captures more information. Tests carried out for months on the university campus with different lighting conditions, vegetation or simply the weather have shown more consistency than conventional methods. A good start with pending subjects. Beyond its promising results, the most striking thing about this research is its commitment to sensory autonomy: it does not depend on networks of beacons or GPS, but on its own sensors. This makes it a potentially more versatile system. However, it faces the great historical challenge of robot placement: how fragile it is in the face of changing environments. It is true that they have tested it in different conditions, but it has been within the campus: making the leap to more complex and constantly changing environments is their litmus test, in addition to additional validation in extreme conditions. Finally, before an eventual real commercial deployment, we will have to see how it integrates with other navigation systems and its computational cost. In Xataka | Tesla has been building the Optimus for years. China has just presented itself with fifteen companies and factories already set up In Xataka | We already have so many “humanoid” robots that it is difficult to differentiate one from the other. This graph fixes it Cover | Enchanted Tools

Taiwan has almost as many motorcycles as inhabitants and a major challenge: converting them into electric ones

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Taiwan has two records if we talk about mobility. It is the first country in the world in motorcycles per inhabitant. And it is the first country in the world in number of vehicles per inhabitant, as long as we remove from the equation San Marino, Guernsey (autonomous islands off the coast of Normandy that respond to the United Kingdom), the autonomous state of Jersey and Andorra, all of them spaces where, let’s say, they are used as monetary refuges. According to the data As collected by the statistics group within the United Nations, Taiwan has 999 registered vehicles per 1,000 inhabitants. But that data hides another record: almost 600 of those vehicles are motorcycles. This means that Taiwan, with its almost 24 million inhabitants, therefore has another almost 24 million vehicles. And the most recent data says that it also has more than 14 million motorcycles. The data reaches its extreme in Taipei, the capital, where there is a number slightly higher than the national average with 65 motorcycles per 100 inhabitants. Is it a lot? It’s a lot. To give us an idea, in Spain there are around 95 motorcycles (53 of them are mopeds) per 1,000 inhabitants, according to data from the European Union. The country with the most registered motorcycles is Greece, which reaches 251 motorcycles (150 of them are mopeds) per 1,000 inhabitants. A figure that doubles (by far) the Asian country. This congestion of motorcycles represents a problem for the State in environmental matters. And they want to change it by jumping to the electric motorcycle. A most ambitious challenge According to data from the Taiwan Ministry of Transportation and CommunicationsIn 2024, 14.6 million motorcycles will be counted. They are, therefore, a substantial part of the country’s carbon emissions. 55% of those recorded in Taiwan are produced by transportation. With the aim of converting the fully electric vehicle fleet by 2050the country has set various objectives ahead. The most ambitious is to prohibit the sale of non-electric motorcycles from 2040. Previously, the State has launched a campaign for customers to opt for this technology. To do this, they explain in Motorpassionthe State is giving huge sums of money for the purchase of electric vehicles. Any electric vehicle, whether motorcycle, car or truck, is taken into account in its plans to help with the purchase. But it is in the former where the discounts are most juicy because they can reach 3,300 Taiwanese dollars (NT$), about 95 euros in direct exchange, in a country where a motorcycle is around 900 euros. Those looking to change a car do have greater incentives, with discounts of up to NT$16,000 (about 460 euros). Although the state is putting pressure for motorists and drivers to change their vehicles, the results are being somewhat discreet. These subsidies have been active for three years and between 2022 and 2025 they have managed to remove from the market (to reach the maximum aid you have to scrap another combustion vehicle) just over 120,000 vehicles, adding all types of types and sizes. A figure that pales only with motorcycle sales, since each year about 700,000 vehicles of this type are registered on the market. That is, in three years the sum of motorcycles, cars and trucks replaced It barely exceeds total scooter sales by 5% in the same period of time. Getting the motorcycle market to switch to the electric market is key for the country. Not only because still the cheapest way to get aroundalso because it is key when it comes to reduce dependency that the country has from foreign oil. Having mobility that depends largely on renewable energies produced in the country itself is a significant step in its relations with the outside world. Photo | Faye Yu In Xataka | The first commercially ready solid state battery is here. And an electric motorcycle is going to take it

Science suggests that it is a great shield against cognitive deterioration

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In our society, the fact that grandparents end up taking care of their grandchildren throughout the day or having to pick them up from school It is something quite normalboosted mainly by the problems of conciliation familiar. This is something that has been the subject of much controversy because, when you reach a certain age, carrying the burden of having a child under your responsibility can take its toll. But now science indicates that it has important benefits. New tests. A study published this year in the magazine Psychology and Aging points out that being involved in caring for grandchildren provides a benefit to cognitive health, although it has different important nuances related to sex and time dedicated. The science behind. This study focused on data from English Longitudinal Study of Aging where More than 1,700 grandparents over 50 years of age have been analyzed. In this case, to ensure maximum precision in the results, the researchers used a matching method, comparing grandparent caregivers with those who did not care for their grandchildren, but who did share demographic and health characteristics. What did they see? With this sample on the table, what was seen is that both grandmothers and grandfathers who are caregivers showed higher levels of verbal fluency compared to the control group. Furthermore, both genders had better episodic memory compared to matched controls. In this way, it can be concluded that grandparents who take care of their grandchildren tend to show better cognitive functioning than those who do not. Quality versus quantity. One of the most revealing conclusions of the study debunks a common myth: the amount of time spent is not the determining factor. In this way, spending more or fewer hours caring for one’s grandson or granddaughter does not predict the effect it may have on brain cognition. But what really affects brain health in this case is the diversity of tasks. What was seen is that grandparents who participated in a greater variety of activities experienced better cognitive outcomes. These activities include, for example, preparing food for your grandchildren, spending time playing with them, helping them with their homework, or picking them up from daycare or school. Gender difference. Although both grandfather and grandmother showed higher initial cognitive levels when caring for their grandchildren, with the passage of time it changed. In the case of both sexes, it was observed that both verbal fluency and episodic memory improved substantially over time. But the difference is precisely in the temporal decline, causing grandmothers who have cared for their grandchildren to have a slower cognitive loss over time than caring grandparents, who maintain the same speed of loss. Because? The researchers here suggest that these differences may be due to how they relate to different genders and how they collaborate on care tasks. In this case, grandmothers tend to become much more deeply involved in the physical and emotional care of children. If we turn to the grandparents, we find that they are involved in leisure activities and often carry out care tasks in the company of the grandmothers. This way, you are not as focused on care. The limit. Logically, Maintaining multiple productive roles, such as family caregiving, can promote a more active lifestyle that positively impacts people’s cognitive functions. However, research warns that adding care responsibilities to the usual activities of these grandparents can be stressful and leave our grandparents feeling overwhelmed and with little autonomy. Images | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | Your grandmother is an evolutionary advantage: science already knows why they generate an indestructible bond with their grandchildren

How to receive a daily email with the summary of your favorite podcast made by artificial intelligence

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Let’s explain to you how to receive summaries of your favorite podcasts by email. These summaries will be made by artificial intelligenceafter you have received the audio file and processed it. This is not something you can do in a specific application, so we will have to configure a workflow of several steps. Specifically, we are going to use the service Makebecause its free version is enough to do it. In addition, we are going to use artificial intelligence Geminisince it is very easy to obtain a free API with which to use AI on this website. At Make.com we will have to log in with the Gemini modules and especially Gmail. It is important to highlight this because in the end you will be giving a third party access to your email, which could compromise your privacy, although this tool is reputable enough to think that it complies and that you should be safe. First you need the RSS of the podcast In order to carry out this automation, the first thing is get the RSS address of the podcast that you want to analyze. It is the page with the code where the title, description and the address of the mp3 file of each chapter appear, which in the end is the most important thing. If you don’t know where to get this address, you can use the Get RSS Feed websitewhich you can get at getrssfeed.com. On this website, you just have to enter the URL to Apple Podcast, iVoox, Spotify or the podcast website, and then it will search there for the RSS address. When it does, click on the button RSS Copy and that’s it, you will have the address copied. It will also be important that Find out what time each chapter is published. At the end of this project, the workflow will have to be scheduled to activate at a certain time each day, and it should be at a time when the chapter has already been published. Configure the Gemini API Key The AI ​​we are going to use for this project is Gemini. And to link and use this AI, you need get a google api. For that, go to the website aistudio.google.com and sign in with your Google account. When you do, in the bar on the left at the bottom click on Get API Key. Now you have to click on the option Create API key that appears at the top of the screen you have created. This will open a window where you have to create the project for which you are going to use it in order to identify it, for example Gmail Gemini. When you create the project, you can now create the API. When you have created the API, you will see that it appears in the list of API keys. You just have to click on the left, below where it says Clueand a window with the API will open, starting with “AIza–“. When you later create the first Gemini modulethen on the login screen you will have to write the Gemini API Key that you generated at the beginning of this tutorial. We are not going to repeat this later because it is something that we will assume has already been done after previous projects such as create a Telegram bot that summarizes your emails. Now we create the workflow Now let’s go to Make.com and create a new scenario or workflow. We start by clicking on the initial + for the first step, for which you have to choose the option Watch RSS feed items. It is used to display the elements of an RSS address. In this first module, what you have to do is write the RSS URL that we have searched for in the previous step, and put it in the URL field. Then, in Maximum number of returned items set 1, so that every time this scenario is run it only pulls the latest post. Once you have this first step configured, I recommend you click on Run eleven to run the project with just this step. Thus, the content will be loaded, and it will appear in the autocompleted suggestions in the following steps. Now let’s go add module HTTP with the action Download a filewhich will be used to extract and download the audio file of the podcast chapter. When you click on URL, a window will appear with autocompletion suggestions, and here you will have to write the address of the mp3 file of the audio. If necessary, you can search for it in the RSS code. In our case, it is in Enclosures > URL. This is a somewhat complex step. A little tip I can give you if you’re not clear is to ask an AI where the audio file is to download, and attach the RSS web address. After the HTTP module, we are going to add a Gemini module. Specifically, we must add module Gemini Upload to filewhich is used to upload a file to artificial intelligence. Here in the field File you have to choose the option HTTP – Download a file. This means that the file that we are going to upload will be the one that we have downloaded with the previous module. Now, After the Gemini module we are going to put another Gemini module. We are going to use the module Generate a response to generate a response. Whom Role put User, and in the Partsin it Item 1 set the message type as text, and choose the option Source to add the source text. and in Item 2 put Filefollowed by audio/mpeg in Mime Typeand in File URI look for the URI. All these elements will have to come from the Upload to file module. Further down, in the field of System Instructionsyou have to open the section Prompts and write a prompt in the field of Prompt 1. This is the prompt with … Read more

that it connects cities is the least of it

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If we stick to surprising infrastructures, China has a good handful that end up leaving you breathless. Bridges that cross entire bays, trains that connect cities at 350 km/h, airports built in record time…And Tianfu Avenue, in Chengdu, also has a special place in this list of mega-constructions. At 150 kilometers long, it is the longest central urban axis in the world. And its history says a lot about how China understands 21st century urbanism. Where does the name come from? Tianfu refers to the historical nickname of Sichuan province: “Land of Plenty.” A region known since ancient times for its fertility and cultural wealth, and whose capital, Chengdu, has been one of the great economic engines of the west of the country for decades. Click on the image to go to the post ORa normal street that was growing. In 1960, the then vice mayor of Chengdu supervised the construction of the Renmin Road, a road 64 meters wide. In 1997, the arrival of the Tianfu interchange, a large elevated infrastructure that passed over the railway tracks in an arc, extended that artery to the south and marked the beginning of what we know today as Tianfu Avenue. In 2004, the municipal government formalized its name and divided it into northern, central and southern sections, although the true transformation would come later. de avenue to metropolitan corridor. In 2012, Chengdu proposed something much more ambitious: turning Tianfu into a “hundred-mile central hub.” The idea was to connect not just neighborhoods or districts, but entire cities. In 2016, the project was expanded further: the route would reach Deyang in the north and Renshou, in Meishan, in the south. The final result is a 150 kilometer road that crosses four different administrative territories. A colossus of cement and metal. In some sections reaches 14 or 16 lanesincluding expressways, local lanes and dividing strips. It has wide sidewalks, bike lanes, garden areas and overpasses at the busiest intersections. In the high-tech zone section, for example, it was renovated in 2022 to become an urban linear park with eight smaller parks, six kilometers of promenade and two large entrance nodes. And all this without interrupting traffic on one of the busiest arteries in the city. What there is along the route. Along its route there are also emblematic points of interest. For example, the New Century Global Center, considered one of the individual buildings largest in the world by constructed area; Xinglong Lake, with a surface area of ​​more than 66 hectares, known as the “green heart of the city”; or the Tianfu interchange mentioned above, a two-kilometer-long structure whose “A”-shaped pylon reaches 78 meters high. At its top is the emblem of the Sun Bird, a symbol of the ancient Jinsha culture. Its economic role. Tianfu Avenue is not a typical infrastructure project. It is, above all, an instrument of economic development. It connects the Chengdu Plain Economic Zone with the Southern Sichuan Economic Zone, two of the most dynamic poles in the region. Along its route there are technology parks, multinational headquarters, financial centers and the Tianfu New Area, a state development zone created with the intention of attracting innovation and sustainable urbanism. According to a report of Southwest Jiaotong University, the avenue is called to be “the north-south economic axis of Sichuan”, beyond its function as a highway connecting cities. The project is not finished. In January 2025, the Renshou section was opened to traffic, completing a key section of the route. In January 2023, Meishan and Zigong they signed an agreement to extend the avenue even further south, passing through Luzhou and reaching Jiangjin, in Chongqing. If this project prospers, the total length of the corridor could exceed 400 kilometers, becoming a fast axis that connects the two great poles of southwest China: Chengdu and Chongqing. In Xataka | Valencia is building an emergency-proof “water highway” so that DANA outages do not happen again

MicroLED promises to be the Holy Grail of televisions. That is your big problem today.

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There are technologies that are born with enormous promise. He MicroLED is one of them. Since Samsung introduced “The Wall” at CES 2018the sector has been telling us for years that this technology is going to revolutionize the way we watch television. And he is right. The problem is that this revolution has not reached anyone’s living room. who is not a billionaire. The technology has become the Holy Grail of the television industry, but the enormous cost of its manufacture means that only the most exclusive models and, let’s say it without frills, extremely expensive, can integrate this technology. Unlike what has happened with OLED or MiniLED, manufacturers have not managed to reduce production costs of these panels to make them competitive in mass manufacturing. What is MicroLED and why is it so special? To understand MicroLED you have to know how current screens work. Traditional LED TVs have a layer of pixels that filters light coming from an array of LED lights installed on the back. It is, therefore, a backlighting technology that offers very good brightness power. The problem is that when those screens need to display pure black, the screen can’t turn off pixel by pixel, so it turns off areas of those rear LEDs. The more dimming zones you have, the better the light control and the more control over the blacks you have. Even so, it is inevitable that some light will sneak in. It’s not really black. The result is very dark grays at best. The technology OLED solved that problem years ago, making each pixel on the screen emit its own light that can be turned off individually. Here, the result is a perfect contrast, but it has its own limits. The LED diodes that make up each pixel are organic, so they degrade over time and are susceptible to burn-in, leaving a permanent mark on the screen after many hours with a static image on the screen. In this sense, the promise of MicroLED technology is to provide the perfect balance between OLED and LED, but without any of their drawbacks. Like OLED, it uses microscopic LEDs as a pixel, but made with inorganic materials that are much more stable and resistant to burning. In this way, the screens MicroLEDs are capable of reaching OLED contrast levelsbut with a much higher shine and with a useful life that is measured in decades. It is literally the best of all worlds. And there is also its trap. The problem: manufacturing the MicroLED is a nightmare A 4K display has about 8.3 million pixels. In the latest MicroLED panels, each of those pixels needs three individual LEDs, leaving us with almost 25 million microscopic chips that must be manufactured, placed and connected with nanometric precision on a panel the size of a television screen. This level of miniaturization required by MicroLED has limited its production to large-inch formats before the challenge it poses fit so many millions of diodes into a 55″ or 65″ panel. The process of mass transfer of these chips, what the industry calls mass transferis extraordinarily complex, and today, also extraordinarily expensive. How much expensive? To put it in context, one of the few MicroLED models that can be purchased in stores is a 89 inch Samsung and has a sale price of 109,000 euros. He LG Magnitaimed at the extreme luxury market, was around 230,000 euros in sizes of 118 and 136 inches. That price range makes them unviable as home televisions (at least for most mortals’ homes). Hence its market figures are very small at present. In all of 2024, they were manufactured less than 1,000 units of MicroLED televisions in the entire world. Samsung sells that many conventional televisions in a matter of minutes. However, although these panels do not reach the living rooms, it does not mean that the MicroLED is stagnant. In fact, it is in development. This technology is growing strongly in those niches where price matters less than performance. In large format signage it has been the standard for years. film and television studio fundslobbies of luxury buildings or private movie theaters. In automotive, the dashboards of the future want bright, durable and efficient screens. And in the wearables segment and augmented reality, both Apple and Samsung have been investing for some time in bringing MicroLED to smart watches and AR glasses, where extreme pixel density is critical and having smaller production volumes makes the cost more manageable. As indicated in an analysis According to Yole Group, the global MicroLED market could grow to nearly $5 billion in revenue by 2032, although most of that will come from those niche segments, not the living room TV. There are MicroLED and “MicroLED” The high production cost made manufacturers explore other ways to make this technology profitable and evolve. One of the solutions was to use as backlight system behind an LCD panel, rather than as self-emissive pixels. Strictly speaking, although the latter have MicroLED technology, they should not be considered as such. However, some brands use it interchangeably in their trade names for advertising purposes. By having a smaller scale, MicroLEDs allow much better control of light and enhancing the colors, but they still require an LCD panel that separates the colors of each subpixel. That is, it would act more like a MiniLED or a conventional LED than an OLED. The good news is that, as brands showed like Hisense and Samsung have already evolved MicroLED technology with white diodes, towards the RGB MicroLEDwhich already has a self-emissive RGB diode for each pixel that, now, would be closer to the operation of an OLED. This evolution, as before MicroLEDs they made other technologiesrepresents the first sign that these panels are beginning a path of optimization to reduce production costs. In fact, the models launched by Samsung during the last CES 2026 It would be around $30,000.. It seems like an exorbitant figure for a television, but it must be taken into … Read more

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