Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Samsung has insisted on maintaining the identity of the S26 Ultra. The price to pay is the battery

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The Samsung Galaxy S26 They’re here, and to no one’s surprise, they’re extremely similar to last year’s. The time of having new mobile phones that are clearly better than those of the previous generation has long passed and we have seen that most of the new features come from the software side. Even so, in this family we see improvements in one of its models: in the S26 Ultra. Improvements in cameras, in power with the Next generation Snapdragon and one privacy screen which still seems like a magic trick to me. It also has a battery from the past: 5,000 mAh when China is betting on figures of 6,000 or 7,000 mAh. And there is a very simple explanation that has nothing to do with Samsung’s conservatism: you can’t have everything. And if the Galaxy S26 Ultra wants to maintain its hallmark, which makes it different in a calendar full of mobile phones that are very similar to each other, it must make sacrifices. I’m talking about the S-Pen. The sacrifice of the Galaxy S26 Ultra that… makes sense We are not going to fool ourselves: Samsung, Google and Apple are three companies that are being too conservative both with battery capacity and loads. They put in just enough so that this charge can be considered ‘fast’ while in China we see phones with new generation batteries that also have much faster charges. You may think that they do not bet on ultra-large batteries with crazy charges for a degradation issuebut it is really the Chinese companies that offer long-term tests on the charging cycles of their batteries. And an 80% degradation in a 7,000 mAh battery is not the same as in a 5,000 mAh battery. The problem is that, although the 4,900 mAh of the Samsung Galaxy S26+ They are unjustifiable from the user’s point of view, the 5,000 mAh of the Galaxy S26 Ultra is more understandable if we look at the insides of the mobile. As an example, I am going to put an image of the interior of the S25 Ultra of the video by JerryRigEverything: Interior of the S25 Ultra. Look how little space the battery has | Screenshot of JerryRigEverything Here we have several interesting things. On the one hand, the enormous space occupied by the SIM tray. Well, really, what it takes up… everything. More than a third of the rear is the plate with the SoC and the cameras, the bottom part is dominated by the speaker, the SIM slot and the USB-C port. and then we have an element that takes up a lot of space: the S-Pen. The SIM slot takes up a lot | Screenshot of JerryRigEverything The pen is stored inside the cell phone and takes up a good portion of it. It’s very easy to see the amount of space you’re stealing from a battery that’s already being suffocated by the rest of the components. And we cannot say that the S25 Ultra is small, precisely. Without the pencil in its compartment, we can better see what the battery is losing | Screenshot of JerryRigEverything When Apple removed headphone jack port He did it for several reasons. One was to be able to sell ourselves wireless headphones more expensive. The other was to scratch millimeters that could be used with the battery. The same thing happens with the most recent movement to banish physical SIM cards. In mobile phones where everything is extremely small and compact, the battery gaining only a few millimeters translates into greater capacities. Because, as much as Chinese mobile phones, especially the folding onesare mounting denser new generation batteries, it is still a space game: the bigger, the more capacity. At least with current technology. The S26 Ultra not only keeps the S-Penbut it is also somewhat thinner than the S25 Ultra while including a larger vapor chamber. No matter how much Samsung makes a denser battery, physically there are elements that steal internal space. This means that the 5,000 mAh must be maintained. Because if in other mobile phones, such as the aforementioned folding ones or in the ultra-thin ones like the iPhone Airwe see that the battery is the protagonist, in the S26 Ultra, in the Ultra family in general, it is just one more element. And here I have mixed feelings. It is true that it is shocking to see a mobile phone costing more than 1,400 euros with a 60 W charge and a 5,000 mAh battery when models like the Honor Magic8 Pro or the OPPO Find X9 Pro with more than 6,000 mAh or 75.00 mAh respectively and 100 W charges. However, the S26 Ultra remains unique in being special for something that many people continue to appreciate. The S-Pen is a very cool component that, although it has been losing functionalityallows us to write on the screen, edit documents and photos much more precisely than with our finger and, ultimately, it is an element that continues to exist because Samsung believes that its users continue to find value in it. If this were not the case, they would have long since loaded an element that makes the production of the mobile phone more expensive and prevents them from moving forward in another direction (adding more battery, for example). Therefore… yes, the S-Pen is mainly responsible for the 5,000 mAh of the Galaxy S26 Ultra. But, at the same time, it is what means that, in an era in which practically all mobile phones are the same, The Ultra continue to have that “special thing” that differentiates them from all the others. And, honestly: I hate Samsung for maintaining that hallmark (but let’s see if they can find the formula for the new silicon-carbon batteries that other manufacturers are already implementing). Photos | JerryRigEveryting, Xataka In Xataka | We already know why mobile phones with 6,000mAh are not arriving in Europe: there is a clear person responsible

the great Spanish paradox of forest risk

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It seems like a contradiction, but that’s how paradoxes work. And this one in particular is so problematic for Spain that in nine out of ten configurations the result is always the same: whatever happens is bad for fires. But why? I mean, how is it possible that whether it rains or not, this country always has a problem with flames? The world on two scales. If it doesn’t rain, if we endure weeks or months of drought, the humidity of the material accumulated in the mountains (grass, bushes, leaf litter) drops. In addition, the soil temperature rises and living vegetation begins to become stressed. Just one spark is missing and boom, we have a fire source that is very difficult to stop. That is, drought worsens the risk today. The rain makes it worse, but it will do so tomorrow. Because if it rains, the vegetation grows (especially what we call fine fuel) and the continuity of the scrub increases. It’s biomass, biomass and more biomass. If it rains there is no risk, if it doesn’t rain: it is material that sooner rather than later will become fodder for the flames. The hell of the summer of 2025, started in spring… Sometimes we don’t focus much on this: wet springs are wonderful, but in our case it is also a potential danger. Not only because of what I explained above, but because (also) no one manages it. And that means that, if the trend continues in the direction it is going, we have to start seeing rainy winters as more than just a way to save the season. We must begin to see them as a clear reminder that we must invest in prevention, plan devices, firewalls, fuel management and all types of extensive farms that help contain the problem. Because climate change is not just “warmer.” A few days ago, AEMET itself reflected on How rainfall records are changing. Changes in the landscape and rural abandonment are a permanent source of problems and the so-called “bullwhip effect” only increases them: growth phases and drying phases that never stop coming and going. So yes, the great Spanish paradox with rains and fires is this: no matter what happens, in the coming years, we will always have problems with fires. Image | Karsten Winegeart In Xataka | In China they are deploying metal firefighters. Maybe they are more useful than robo-waiters

In the 70s Álava left an entire town under its airport. What I didn’t know was that it was hiding a treasure of 5,000 medieval coins.

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He Vitoria airport It may not be the largest, the best connected or the busiest in the country, but it stands out for the volume of merchandise it moves. Last month it exceeded 5,400 tonswhich consolidates it as Aena’s fourth busiest aerodrome, only behind Barajas, El Prat and Zaragoza. If the Alava terminal works, moving cargo, planes and hundreds of thousands of passengers, it is thanks to an old village that ended up buried in the 70s: Otaza. The most curious thing is that he did it with a hidden medieval treasure. The price of growing. In the 1970s, Álava businessmen found themselves with a dilemma. If they wanted to continue growing, they needed better connections, regular flights that would allow them to reach the rest of the metropolises in Spain and Europe. They had the Salburua airfieldinaugurated in 1935, but it did not seem like the best solution, so the technicians had to look for alternatives. And they found her. After evaluating several locations in the region, such as Ullibarri Arrazua. Salvatierra or Zurbano concluded that the best solution was to set up a new aircraft facility on the land of the town of Foronda. A work in record time. The project had the support of the Provincial Council and moved forward with astonishing speed. At least for the deadlines that infrastructures the size of an airport usually handle today. The construction of the aerodrome was approved in 1972 and in 1976 Civil Aviation gave its OK to the first phase. The works, remember The Mailinvolved the construction of a 2,200 x 45 m flight runway, in addition to the operating systems. The work (and procedures) continued to advance at a good pace during the following years. In 1978, the institutional machinery was launched to contract the control tower, accesses and urbanization and just two years later (the January 30, 1980) the ministry officially opened Vitoria Airport to national and international passenger traffic. In April of that same year Iberia inaugurated one of its most important lines, the one that exalts it with Madrid. Sew and sing, right? Not at all. The construction of the terminal encountered a problem: the proximity of a small village that ended up being located 370 meters from the runway. His name: Otaza. The population had a long history and it even had its own church, but it was not what is said to be very populous. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 19th century it hosted only about thirty of people, more or less what there were in 1974, when according to The Mail 26 neighbors lived there. The Álava authorities were therefore faced with a dilemma: What should take priority, the new airfield or a village with a handful of families? And the pickaxe arrived. The expropriation was not what is called simple. Not all the neighbors willingly agreed to leave their homes and in fact there were a few ‘numantinos’ (not many, it is true) who did not leave until the end. Their efforts did not prevent the bulldozers from taking Otaza away. In October 1979, the regional press reported how, after a break and despite not yet having reached a total agreement with the neighbors, the authorities had resumed the demolition work. The Bishopric had fewer objections, which reached an agreement that allowed the village temple to be demolished. The pickaxe had to work little. A few days later, on November 2, the demolition was completed. A town to remember. That was the end of Otaza. Although in its day the town had welcomed dozens of people, had a church and services, the expropriation of the land and the demolition works sealed its fate. Shortly after completing the works, the authorities agreed the disappearance of the council, which is now part of Astegieta. However, as EITB recalls, it was not the only town affected by the works on the new terminal. Antezana of Foronda He also paid a ‘toll’ for Álava to have its own flights. One last surprise. Otaza’s story could have ended there if it weren’t for the fact that shortly after his ‘death’, in April 1980, a family decided to take a walk through the grounds. During the walk, as they passed near the church of San Emeterio and San Celedonio, they found a jar with coins. The piece caught their attention enough to report it to the authorities, who confirmed that it was a curious treasure: more than 5,000 coins of copper and silver minted during the reigns of Alfonso I of Aragon and Alfonso VIIIbetween the 12th and 13th centuries. Today it is known as “the treasure of Otaza”. Images | WikipediaGoogle Earth and Mikelo (Flickr) In Xataka | Barajas needed to improve its roads but a baroque hermitage made it complicated. Solution: put it in a roundabout

The new director of Comic-Con Málaga does not come from fandom, but from a sector that can solve last year’s problems

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The first international edition of San Diego Comic-Con broke sales records of tickets and attracted almost 100,000 people to Malaga. The organization, however, received abundant criticism: capacity to the limit, queues that lasted hours and more than 550 complaints accumulated by consumer associations. Now comes a change of direction and, with it, a new opportunity to prove that pop culture’s biggest event can work outside of California. The first Comic-Con outside the US The mere news that Málaga would host the first international edition generated an expectation which translated into instant sales: three of the four days of the event were sold out in less than 24 hours at 50 euros per day. And there were still no guests. When these they started to advertise (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Antonio Banderas, Elle Fanning, Jared Leto or the composer of ‘Final Fantasy’ Nobuo Uematsu, among more than thirty international guests) the first criticisms intensified: it was not an event for fans, like its original namesake, but rather oriented completely to the mainstream. Some figures. The official statement announcing the first plans for 2027 takes stock of last year and speaks of 95,784 attendees over four days, with an economic impact of 44.3 million euros and the participation of more than 110 exhibitors and brands such as Disney, Nintendo, Lego and Bandai Namco. Here we find the first discrepancies with the past: the Malaga City Council announced at the time that attendance had been greater than 120,000 people (thus exceeding the 30,000 daily visitors admitted to the Trade Fair Palace). 25,000 visitors difference in the information that the organization does not explain now, nor is there any mention of the more than 550 consultations accumulated by Facua and OCU to file claims. Changes in the organization. Implicitly admitting that there are issues to improve, a change has also been communicated to the front of the event. Fernando Piquer assumes general management, replacing Javier Barberá. His profile is striking: founder and CEO of Movistar Riders, one of the most recognized esports teams in Spain, and responsible for the Global Strategy of Movistar KOI before this new assignment, he has no previous connection with the world of comics or fandom, which has already generated the first criticism. However, his choice makes sense: large esports festivals have served in the last decade as a laboratory for managing massive events, with young audiences, a festive atmosphere and large numbers of people in closed venues. These are events used to digitally managing massive influxes: digital accreditation systems, capacity control by zones, staggered time slots, computerized queue management, all of this is applied today to entertainment fairs. The question remains for the 2026 edition about content and guests, but a good team should solve that problem. Possible solutions. Massive and comparable events such as Gamescom in Cologne or Paris Games Week have incorporated ticket systems by time slots, official apps that show crowd saturation maps divided into pavilions, and there are organizational teams dedicated exclusively to managing access flows. It is also worth reviewing the prohibitions on bringing water and food to the event, given the saturation that occurred at the food stalls and fountains. They are technical problems that have been identified and that can be solved: the next step should be announcements in that direction, especially considering that criticism of the event in terms of organization was widespread. In Xataka | “We are taking the industry towards 3D”: the creator of ‘DOOM’ has a full-time job and that is explaining ‘DOOM’ to you

With Plenitude, the kWh will cost you the same 24 hours a day and, at the same time, you get a gift card for Netflix

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If you have an electricity rate with time slotsthe watch is your greatest ally. You probably try to organize yourself as much as possible to turn on the washing machine or dishwasher in the off-peak sections, thus saving money along the way. This creates stress in many homes.especially when unforeseen events arise or there are small children at home. What alternative do we have? A rate where the kWh has exactly the same price 24 hours a day. That’s just what it offers Plenitude’s Easy Ratethat now bring a gift with you in the form of a Netflix gift card. Of course, only if you hire before next March 2. A fee to be able to put on the washing machine (or whatever) without looking at the clock Although it may not seem like it, there is a fairly considerable difference between the price per kW between the cheapest and most expensive hours. If you can use the most demanding appliances at off-peak hours, there is no problem. But, What if you get home at 7 p.m. every day? There you will have to pay the most expensive price, which can make your electricity bill skyrocket. That does not happen with the Plenitude Easy Rate. with her, the price of electricity will be exactly the same all day (at the time of writing, 0.128306 per kWh). This way, no matter how many unforeseen events you have during the day, you won’t have to worry about how much electricity costs at a certain time of day. Furthermore, once you contract the rate, the price of kWh will remain stable for 12 months. This means that, if, for example, an energy crisis occurs that increases the price of electricity, you will continue paying the same. And it does not have any type of permanence, something that not all electricity rates on the market offer. Hiring can be done in several ways, although you have the option of doing everything through the Plenitude website. In this way, you will have a 100% digital process which will only take you a few minutes. We are talking about the Easy Rate for electricity, although Plenitude also offers the same for gas, as well as for having both supplies together. Now it’s time for the promo we mentioned above, active only until March 2. Any of these rates include a 50-euro Netflix gift card that we will receive after the first month of contracting. We can use this for both a new account and one we already have. If we do numbers, it’s great: It gives you almost four months of the Standard plan. Everything together gives us an opportunity to save every month, both on the electricity bill and by removing a subscription for a while. Although yes: only if you hurry and you contract the Easy Rate before March 2. 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 | Patrick Schneider on UnsplashPlenitude In Xataka | What do you need (according to the EU) for your survival kit and how much will it cost you? In Xataka | Best power banks to charge your mobile phone. Which one to buy and recommended external batteries

How to create a game with multiple choice questions on any PDF to study with the help of artificial intelligence

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Let’s explain to you how to create an interactive multiple choice game to help you study anything. We are going to do it with Claudeand you will only have to upload any PDF with the theme you want, and the artificial intelligence It will process its content and ask you questions about it. For this we are going to use the Claude’s artifactswhich means that they will be fully interactive games. In our case, it will be a test type, with several answers of which there is only one valid. So, if you click on the correct answer it will tell you that it is true, and if you click on the incorrect one it will correct you by giving you all the information about why it is not like that. The positive part of using Claude is that you only need a prompt and it will generate the game artifact for you. However, you should keep in mind that all PDFs you upload will be processed by AI, and that could be stored on servers of the company. Therefore, be careful about uploading files that contain private information. You should also keep in mind that AI is not infallible, and that there may be errors and hallucinations, so it is advisable to verify the answers by other means. In addition, you must also make sure that the PDFs you upload have accurate information. Create your multiple choice question game The only thing you have to do to create your game is write a prompt with which ask the AI ​​to create an artifact and describe the type of game what you want You can start with something simple like the following: I want to create an artifact. This artifact will take the information from a PDF that I upload, and will generate a series of multiple choice questions to learn the content. You will do this using Claude, who will analyze the content of the PDF, detect the most important themes and then generate the questions. Once you write the prompt, Claude will generate the game in a few minutes. At the top prompt you can specify anything you want about the game, both specific mechanics and adding a scoring system such as the number of questions or even the colors of the buttons. Then, on the left side, a window will open where you will be able to start your game. For that, the normal thing is that you simply click on the indicated option and upload the PDF from which you want the questions to be generated. Then, in my case I had to choose the number of questions, and then click on the start button below. When you upload the content and start the game, Claude will begin to analyze the content of the documentunderstanding what it says and based on its information to generate questions. After analyzing the content, the game will start asking you questions. As we have asked it to be a test typeit will ask you questions with several possible answers, and you will have to click on the one you consider to be the correct one. If you got it right, it will tell you. But if you fail to choose the correct answer, it will also indicate the failure. In my case, below the correct or incorrect answers, a fragment of the text appears in which it tells you the correct answer. It is not necessary to stay with the first result. If when you try it you are not convinced, you can return to the conversation and ask Claude for changesspecifying the things you want to change or those you want to add or remove. It will then regenerate the artifact from scratch with your instructions. Save your device to use whenever you want Once you have the device to your liking, in the upper right part of the screen you must click on the down arrow button next to where it says Copy. When you do it, click on the option Publish artifact. This will upload your creation to the servers and keep it saved. By publishing your artifact, anyone will be able to find it, and you will also be given a link to share it. But most importantly, in the artifacts section there is a tab Your artifactsand when you click on it you will see all those that you have created. This will be a good way to reuse the game you created whenever you want. In Xataka Basics | Claude: 23 functions and some tricks to get the most out of this artificial intelligence

How to find free, open source or one-time payment alternatives to subscription services with this website

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Do you want to reduce the number of subscriptions you pay? Let’s tell you how to find the best alternatives to programs and applications that require a subscription. Among the alternatives you will have open source services, free or that only require a single payment. We are going to do this with one of those pages that should be saved in favorites. It’s about the web nosubscription.organd we are going to teach you how to use it to find your alternatives. The best alternatives to subscription services NoSubscription is a project with a manifesto in which they believe that users should own their toolsnot renting them with monthly subscriptions. For this reason, those responsible for the website say their mission is to find, verify and promote the best software and services that you buy with a single payment, free and open source. All you have to do is enter nosubscription.organd at the top use your search engine. In it, you can write the name of the subscription tool you want to replacebut also the category of the tool or application. When you type a name, the results will appear with the best alternatives. Notice that below the name it appears which services are alternatives for, because sometimes it can appear out of order. Then, The type of price will appear in green that is, as if it is free or even the total price if it is a single payment. And if you write a category, such as Socialyou will see that alternatives appear and in each one for which service or social network they are a substitute. you will also see What operating systems do you have apps for?with the logos of each one or a globe if used by browser. You can also look for alternatives to other applications popular ones, like Chrome, social networks, operating systems, whatever. When you click on one of the services you will go to its file. In it you will have a description and a list with its key features. On the right you will see its category, the type of application or service it is, where it is available and a button to go to the official website in case you want to find out more. In Xataka Basics | European alternatives to Gmail and Outlook: the best email providers made in Europe

An AI publishes 11,000 podcasts a day by copying local journalists. And at the moment there is no way to stop the avalanche

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An automated podcast network publishes more episodes in 24 hours than many broadcasters do in a year, using AI to convert news articles to audio in minutes. A specific case, that of the channel ‘The Daily News Now!’, helps us to consider how far the scraping of content in the era of generative AI. To loot. The case was put on the table indicator: On January 31, at 2:57 in the afternoon, the newspaper ‘The Chronicle’ (a completely marginal publication: despite being 120 years old, it is published by Duke University, in Durham, and is run and produced entirely by students) published an article about Gemma Tutton, a student and pole vaulter who had won a university competition. Seventeen minutes later, a podcast called ‘Durham News Today’ uploaded an episode titled ‘Gemma Tutton’s Triumphant Return to Pole Vault’ to Spotify. The podcast, of course, had no connection with the newspaper. But it reproduced almost all the data from the original article in the same order, including practically identical phrases. And it is not an isolated case: ‘Durham News Today’ is one of at least 433 programs that make up ‘The Daily News Now!’ podcast network created by Corey Cambridge. As of January 23, ‘DNN’ has published more than 350,000 episodes (approximately 11,000 per day). How they do it. Obviously, with AI: a system of scraping (software automation that extracts large volumes of content) monitors media websites, excises text from published articles, processes it using natural language synthesis tools, converts it into audio and distributes it on platforms such as Spotify. All in a matter of minutes. And they don’t bother to dissemble: according to Indicator, they reproduce the structure, data and writing of pieces published by outlets such as local Fox and NBC affiliates, ‘TechCrunch’, ‘Toronto Star’, ‘The Verge’ or the radio station ‘WRAL’. The tools. To understand why an operation of this type is technically possible today, we must take a look at the ecosystem of tools that has been democratizing synthetic audio production for two years. In September 2024, Google activated the feature globally Audio Overview of NotebookLM. The tool converts any document uploaded by the user into an audio summary. The impact was immediate: NotebookLM went from 652,000 monthly visits in August of that year to 10.5 million in September, an increase of 371% in thirty days. In the three months following the global launch, users accumulated audio with a total duration greater than 350 years of continuous reproduction. NotebookLM normalized the idea of ​​the synthetic podcast, and it was all downhill from there. ElevenLabsspecialized in speech synthesis and valued at more than a billion dollars, launched its GenFM function in December 2024, which allows you to generate complete episodes from text. Wondercraftfunded in part by ElevenLabs, introduced support for editing podcasts generated with NotebookLM. Podcastle, aimed at podcast creators, incorporated speech generation with text to complete or replace fragments of speech. The secret: the price. In an analysis from a similar network (Inception Point AIwhich generates around 3,000 episodes per week with more than fifty AI announcers) producing an episode costs approximately one dollar, and with just 20 listeners the episode is profitable thanks to programmatic advertising. The model does not seek loyal audiences, but search engine positioning: by publishing hyper-specific episodes on cities or niche topics minutes after local media launch their articles, these networks anticipate humans’ capacity for informative immediacy. In other words: ‘The Daily News Now!’ appears in the top Spotify results for local news searches in dozens of American cities. It directly competes (and in many cases surpasses) the media from which it steals content. Legal issues. Cambridge defends itself by saying that its network only accesses “publicly available information” and merely summarizes it. But Indicator found almost thirty episodes of ‘Durham News Today’ that reproduced the structure, order and specific sentences of articles from ‘The Duke Chronicle’: it is not a specific pattern. And Cambridge may still be legally protected, but the problem is more about information ethics than legal details. In any case, in May 2025, the United States Copyright Office came to the conclusion that “publicly accessible” material is not necessarily free to use. There are legal precedents in that direction: in November 2025, a federal judge from New York did not reject the lawsuit by fourteen major publishers (including Forbes, The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Times) against the AI ​​company Cohere, considering that their summaries could constitute direct infringement if they reproduced “structure, sequencing, tone and expressive choices” of the original articles. On the contrary, in April of the same year, the case NYT vs. Microsoft dismissed claims related to the Copilot-generated summaries on the grounds that they were not “substantially similar” to the source articles. Meanwhile, and still without trialthere is the case of the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, accused of using journalistic content to train their models Very clever. There is another detail: we are not talking about the ‘New York Times’, but rather ‘DNN’ concentrates its production on local niche news (university athletics, student councils, cats trapped in trees), first because these contents generate specific searches with little competition on Spotify. And second, because legally it is safer. They point to more fragile journalism models. Meanwhile, distributors like Spotify are developing tools to detect artificial music (removed more than 75 million tracks), but the next step is to make big brands aware that they do not benefit from the exploitation of newsrooms that cannot defend themselves. In Xataka | AI is already a battlefield: Anthropic has just accused DeepSeek and other Chinese companies of “distilling” Claude

RAM memory already represents 35% of the cost of a PC. The only solution that HP finds: capable equipment

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The PC industry – like many others – is facing a perfect storm that is completely altering manufacturing costs. As revealed by Karen Parkhill, CFO of HP, RAM memory has increased its prices so much that its specific weight in the cost of a PC is now almost unsustainable. Bad business. 35% of what your PC costs you is RAM. According to the directive, RAM memory has gone from representing an acceptable 15–18% of the bill of materials for your PCs and laptops to representing a suffocating 35%. The change is drastic, and has occurred in just one fiscal quarter. Things will get worse. This increase is due to the fact that according to HP, memory costs have doubled sequentially and have grown by 100% in a few months. Not only that: the company’s forecast is pessimistic, and they expect prices to rise as 2026 progresses. From more expensive PCs… The direct consequence for users is inevitable: the prices of PCs and laptops are going to rise. Analysts are already warning of increases of between 15% and 20% in the RRP of these devices, and in fact HP has already begun to make changes to its price tags precisely to protect its profit margins in the face of the massive increase in the price of critical components such as DRAM memory and NAND chips in SSD units. …to capable PCs. But the price is not the only thing that will change. To keep the equipment “affordable”, HP is adopting another strategy that we had already seen in mobile phones: that of “cut specifications.” This means that we will see more low- and mid-range configurations with less RAM than one would expect in 2026. The measure is clearly intended to save costs at the sacrifice of performance. At the moment they are saving the ballot. At HP they are diversifying their suppliers and cutting back on specifications and extras to compensate for the extra cost of chips. The company is even using AI systems to optimize its planning processes and has halved the time it takes to qualify new materials for agile component changes. The demand for HP PCs is still there: its personal systems division grew 11% in revenue. The company warns, however, that this trend could fall: high prices could cause sales to slow down. Damn data centers. The big culprit of everything is AI, of course, which is causing most of the production of DRAM memory chips and NAND chips to be destined for the AI ​​accelerators of NVIDIA and other manufacturers and, of course, for the gigantic data centers that are being planned everywhere. In addition, the industry is focusing on HBM memories, which are much more powerful for AI applications but which cause the production of “traditional” memories to suffer. Hello, 8 GB of RAM in 2026. For many years it seemed that 8 GB of RAM had become the de facto standard in our laptops and many PCs, but a couple of years ago we clearly made the leap to 16 GB. This crisis threatens to take us back to the past and see many “affordable” computers with 8 GB of RAM. Can we survive with this memory? Most likely yes… if our use of the equipment is relatively modest. The 16 GB really helps a lot now that we have become accustomed to opening a lot of browser tabs and applications in an era where these consume more and more memory. 8 GB seemed like a thing of the past, but we fear that we will have to learn to live with that type of configuration again. In Xataka | If you were thinking about setting up a NAS to create your own cloud, we have bad news: AI has other plans

Living for free in your parents’ house does not imply a donation of the home

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He house price It is one of the main obstacles to the emancipation of young people in Spain. According to data According to the Spanish Youth Council, only 15.2% of young people can afford to live outside the family home. Of them, 57.9% do so in rented apartments and a third of these young people share a flat with other young people to be able to bear the expenses. In this context, it is not strange to find people over 30 years old living with their parents. However, according to have confirmed the Ministry of Finance to VerifyRTVEit is false that living for free in your parents’ home, or in “any property of your parents”, can be considered “as a donation”. The Treasury makes it clear: there is no donation. Both from the Ministry of Finance like from the union of Technicians of the Ministry of Finance (GESTHA) point out that there is no tax or legal change that penalizes children for residing in the family home. Sources from the Ministry of Finance confirmed to damn.es that “there have been no legal changes or changes in the orientation of administrative actions since the IRPF existed, nor has it ever been considered a fiscal risk.” Carlos Cruzado, president of the GESTHA union, explained to RTVE that no taxes or duties apply additional taxes for the simple fact that an adult shares a home with his or her parents. Donation is a change of ownership, not use. The reason why no charge is made is because, simply, when a child lives with his or her parents, no transfer of assets occurs. The consensual use that is made of it changes, not the ownership. This change of use between family members without financial compensation does not fit into any of the assumptions of the Inheritance and Donation Taxso neither parents nor children they must pay that tax. The professor of Financial Law Rosa María Galán pointed to damn.es that, in the case of children without economic resources to survive on their own, the article 142 of the Civil Code obliges parents to cover the support, housing, clothing and medical care of their children. There is no need to argue for free coexistence since providing it is a legal obligation. It even applies to second homes. This same logic applies even when parents and children do not live in the same property, but, for example, the parents live in the primary home, and the children in a second residence owned by the parents. According to Cruzado, the Treasury “understands that there may be a free transfer and does not allocate a return at market value.” In this case, the parents are taxed the same as if the home were empty due to the imputation of real estate income in personal income tax, the same obligations that already exist. for having a second residence without regular use. In this case, the owner of the home must pay a tax of 2% of the cadastral value of the property, and in some cases is reduced to 1.1%. That is, what is taxed is the condition of second home ownership, not the fact that children live in the home or not. The transfer of use is not a donation: the distinction that changes everything. As and as explained José María Salcedo, managing partner of the tax firm Salcedo Tax Litigation to Idealistiche article 6.5 of the Personal Income Tax Law establishes a presumption of onerousness. This means that the Treasury tends to assume that any transfer has a price. However, this presumption admits evidence to the contrary, and the most common instrument to prove it is the bailment contracta document that formalizes the loan of the property without financial consideration and that, according to Cruzado, the Treasury “does not usually carry out these checks”, although it serves as a guarantee to justify “free of charge the right to use someone else’s property for a certain period of time.” In Xataka | There is a less painful solution so that an inheritance does not become a ruin for the heirs: renounce it Image | Pexels (Kampus Production)

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