Mobile Tech & Gadgets Archives - Page 531 of 1642

The debate format that has been radicalizing opinions in the US for years. arrives in Spain. Xokas is its protagonist

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

The Galician streamer The Xokas sat opposite several ideological rivals in a debate produced and presented by Ibai Llanos on YouTube. The format, which draws directly from the Anglo-Saxon model popularized by Charlie Kirk and ‘Turning Point USA’, leaves open a few questions about the politicization of streaming entertainment and the risks of a genre that turns ideas into spectacle. The Xoqué? If you have been under a virtual rock in recent months and have no idea who El Xkoxas is, here are some facts: Gonzalo Pérez grew up like streamer during the pandemic years, the same period in which platforms like Twitch They multiplied their user base in Europe. Millions of confined people found in these new communicators a company that traditional television did not offer them, and creators like El Xokas capitalized on it. Its followers are mostly young men, between 16 and 30 years old, a very important fact to understand the drift towards incendiary political opinions that its content is having lately. It becomes politicized. The transition of gaming to the political commentary It was not a leap, but a gradual change. Xokas incorporated opinions on current affairs, criticism of what he called “single thinking” and positions on cultural debates (feminism, identity, political correctness) that generated more opinions for and against than any video game game. The search for controversy is a strategy that YouTube algorithm rewards to a greater extent than neutral content. Its truthfulness or independence are aspects completely unrelated to success. Consequence of this drift: He doesn’t invent anything. The “political streamer” is a figure who has come a long way outside of Spain. Figures like Tim Pool either Steven Crowder In the United States they created a template that El Xokas is now repeating: they build a base audience on entertainment topics and when they grow, they pivot towards political commentary, without losing followers along the way, and gaining many new ones. Until recently, our ecosystem of creators declared itself apolitical, with successful streamers like Ibai or El Rubius absolutely oblivious to this type of controversy (and although it is often easy to detect the colors, never declared, of creators like AuronPlay, TheGrefg or Illojuan). The model that Kirk invented. And so we come to the debate of ‘Xokas vs. 8 haters’: eight people critical of the streamer’s career debate with him one by one, with Ibai as host and referee. They talked about Xokas’ personality, politics, economics or feminism and four days later, the video has exceeded four and a half million views. It is a format copied from the debates that Charlie Kirk, A conservative debater, he was organizing until his death since 2012: he in the center, progressive students rebutting him one after another, with Kirk responding to each argument before moving on to the next. The format problem. Different studies have pointed out problems with the format, which make rhetorical ability the true value of these discussions: whoever speaks faster and with more confidence seems to win even if their data is incorrect. In the absence of real-time verification mechanisms, the appearance of handling authentic data matters more than actually doing so. The central debater has an advantage due to the confrontation with successive rivals, which eliminates the pressure of arguments: every time a rival finds a line of argument, time runs out. This Spanish version has some added problems: the title itself already generates an editorial reading: naming the critics as “haters” implies that Xokas is the one who is right: if he debates against “haters”, any argument they raise is associated in advance with bad faith, not with reasoning. Politics, on YouTube. A recent Reuters report documents that Spain follows the European trend of shifting information consumption towards video platforms. Those under 35 years of age are the group furthest from traditional formats and, therefore, are more exposed to political opinion mediated by content creators. That is, the public conversation about taxes, feminism or freedom of expression occurs in environments where the editorial rules are different, more wild and less regulated than those of a conventional medium. History of controversies. To get an idea of how the Xokas positions may be affecting younger people, these are some of the controversial opinions they have expressed: Critical in 2021 to ElRubius and TheGrefg for going to Andorra to pay less taxes. Less than a year later, he threatened to leave if they kept uploading them to him. His trick stolen from “a friend” to flirt with drunk girls was the one who generated more criticism outside the streaming environment, and motivated the famous video of the Ministry of Equality in which he was actively identified as one of the main sources of sexist attitudes of mass reach in Spain. In March 2022, it was discovered that her Twitter defender @CathyVipi, which she used to insult critics and competitors, he carried it himself. He stated that the majority of people who cannot change their physique are “undisciplined and lazy“, rejecting the influence of genetic or psychological factors. It was criticized how opinions of this type can affect young followers. After invest in Knoweatsa home-prepared food company, publicly attacked Wetaca (direct competition) in a live broadcast. Wetaca responded on social media by recovering previous statements from Xokas in which it said that “eating healthy is stupid“. Controlling the narrative of all these controversies is essential for El Xokas and his occasional ally Ibai. For this, nothing better than a trap debate. In Xataka | China has solved the mystery of why there are people who go bankrupt watching streams: the “榜一大哥”

If you don’t optimize your resume, the AI will filter it out, leaving you out. If you use AI, a human recruiter will leave you out

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

The use of AI in hiring processes personnel is increasingly widespread, both by human resources departments with the use of automatic ATS filtering of candidates (Applicant Tracking System) and by candidates to, precisely, overcome AI filters. However, using AI to optimize resumes may have overwhelmed recruiters searching for candidates. that stand out from the restnot clone resumes. The boom in CVs generated by AI. The implementation of AI systems has radically changed the way we find employment. Simply copy and paste the job description into ChatGPT, you get an optimized resume for that specific offer, filled with keywords that exactly match the terms that the bot waiting on the other side of the Submit button will select. As and as they described From the Manfred technological employment platform, this means that each offer receives a flood of identical applications, where everyone repeats the same terms. According to a survey According to the consulting firm Hays, at the end of 2024, 40% of professionals were already using AI for their CV that year, 3% more than in 2023, and they expect it to reach 80% in five years. As a result of this increase, recruiters receive hundreds of profiles that pass the filters and appear to be the ideal candidates, but fail. at the first human glance. Companies want to hire people. As and how I collected Washington Postrecruiters have developed the ability to identify these “synthetic” resumes. Patterns such as the absence of synonyms, mechanical repetitions or an excessively polished tone reveal the use of AI in your writing. according to human resources experts. According to a survey conducted by the employment assistance platform Resume.io, 49% of hiring managers reject resumes suspected of being generated by AI. The recruiters interviewed in the article Washington Post They are in favor of using AI as an assistance tool to “cover gaps” and make the writing of the resume more complete. But delegating it completely to AI generates rejection because, in reality, they don’t know who they are hiring. “If this is how you apply and this is how you work, I don’t want to hire you,” said Joseph Eitner, director of human resources at Eaton Capital Management, a New York investment firm. “Job seekers should use it to enrich their work. They should not use AI for the entire process,” said Ron Sharon, chief information security officer at financial consulting firm PTMA Financial Solutions. Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI developers, positioned itself along the same lines in its job offers, urging its employees not to use AI to complete the application form with the aim of getting to know their candidates better and emphasizing that it did not matter if they did not have the appropriate training since the form was not going to pass any AI filter. A game where everyone loses. The use of AI in preparing resumes and cover letters has increased in response to ATS filtering systems. Candidates simply hope to pass the initial filter and advance through the selection process to reach the interview phase and meet face to face with an interviewer. In this sense, it is the companies and recruiters themselves who they have created the monster which they now repudiate. According what was published by Forbes82% of companies use AI to scan candidates’ initial applications, creating a race between algorithms to optimize for each other. Along the way, the candidate loses his “humanity” but the company also loses its culture and values. Candidates cannot be blamed for adapting to a technology present in a good part of open personnel selection processes. The process is broken. Huntr’s Q2 2025 ‘Job Search Trends Report’ points out that 85% of candidates looking for a job take more than nine months to find a job. For its part, a meta-analysis of the sector revealed that 63% apply for more than 337 vacancies, of which only 2% manage to interview with a human recruiter. On LinkedIn, they only respond to 3.3% of the candidates. This constant bickering It exhausts companies and candidates alike, complicating the search for suitable candidates for open positions. Currently, companies are experiencing a contradiction in their hiring processes, as they claim adaptability and attitude in their candidates, but surely those candidates were discarded in the first filter because his CV was not optimized by an AI. In Xataka | If your chair limps during a job interview, it’s no coincidence: they’re evaluating more than just your resume. In Xataka | The latest trend to ace job interviews: training with ChatGPT as a recruiter Image | Unsplash (Vitaly Gariev)

The US threatened to take the Rota base to Morocco. Spain has buried it with an unbeatable offer: more territory

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

Since the Madrid Pacts Since 1953, the US military presence in southern Spain has been one of the silent pillars of Western security architecture. Throughout the Cold War, the crises in the Mediterranean and the successive enlargements of NATO, this relationship has survived changes of government, diplomatic tensions and strategic redefinitions without losing its structural weight. Therefore, an idea that had gained strength It worried Spain. The threat that shook the board. It happened in the summer of 2025, when from circles close to the Republican Party slipped the idea of moving the Rota and Morón bases to Morocco in response to the Spanish refusal to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP. As the days passed, the debate stopped being rhetorical and became a strategic question of first order. The proposal suggested that Washington could punish an ally considered insufficiently committed by relocating key assets to the Maghreb, in a context of increasing US support for Rabat and internal tensions in NATO over burden sharing. However, beyond the political noise, the real viability of this maneuver depended on much deeper factors than a simple temporary decision. The first reason: anti-missile shields. Rota is not an interchangeable base, but an essential node of the NATO missile shield together with Romania and Poland, integrated into a system of sensors, radars, satellites and command centers that requires millimeter coordination and reaction times of between five and twenty-five minutes. Not only that. Also houses Aegis destroyers equipped with SM-3 missiles and is part of the technical framework whose nerve center is in Germany, all in allied territory fully integrated into the Atlantic Alliance. The simple idea of moving that capacity to Morocco would imply rebuild from scratch critical infrastructures, redesign the legal and operational framework and, above all, locate sensitive parts of the system in a country that does not belong to NATO, with the legal and political complications that this entails. Morocco is not NATO territory. Rabat has offered in the past ports and military facilitiesand its weight as a strategic partner in the Maghreb and the Sahel has grown exponentially hand in hand with US support for the Sahara and normalization with Israel. However, it is one thing to strengthen cooperation and quite another to replace a structural base already established by facilities outside the allied legal and military umbrella. They remembered in Infodefensa that implementing equivalent capabilities there would require extremely complex bilateral agreements, multimillion-dollar investments and institutional guarantees difficult to match those of a European partner, in addition to altering the logistical balance that allows the United States Navy operate with continuity in the Mediterranean, the eastern Atlantic and Africa. A second irrefutable reason. As they said this morning in Spanishfar from reducing its weight, Rota has begun an expansion valued at more than 400 million of euros, a work that involves new docks, semi-buried magazines and maintenance contracts that can reach 90 million annually with up to six destroyers deployed. In this way, Spain has not only authorized the increase from four to six Aegis vessels, but is adapting the infrastructure to double docking capacity and consolidate the base as a high-tech anti-aircraft and anti-submarine node. In political and strategic terms, the operation amounts to a kind of reinforced transfer of territory and operational sovereignty, although assuming, of course, that the base converts Spanish soil into a potential target in the event of conflict. Broken as a structural piece. In short, the presence of thousands of American soldiers, the agreed ceiling in the bilateral agreement and the local economic impact show a relationship that transcends governments and cycles politicians. So that the hypothesis of a transfer If Morocco were to be moderately credible, clear signs of withdrawal should be observed, such as a reduction in ships or a halt in investments, and the truth is that exactly the opposite is happening. There was already a compelling reason why the United States could not take the base to Morocco: its irreplaceable integration in the NATO architecture. And now Spain has just added a second one that is even more difficult to ignore, by reinforcing and expanding that presence with investments and effective transfer of strategic space that consolidate the Rota base. as a structural piece of Washington’s device in Europe. Image | NavyUS Navy In Xataka | In 1953 the United States decided to put a naval base in Rota. Now the facility looks to its future with uncertainty In Xataka | If the question is whether Spain can deny the US its bases to provide air support to Israel, the answer is not so simple.

There was a time when Japan was the king of TVs. All its giants have ended up surrendering to the evidence

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

Not so many years ago, talking about Japanese televisions was talking about the kings of the market. Not so much for volume but for quality. The Sony Trinitron were (and still are) to play retro video games) legendary, but there were the technologies of Sharp, Toshiba or the plasma from Panasonic. However, first South Korea and now China have run over Japanese brands. And Panasonic is the latest “victim.” And it may be for the best. The Panasonic case. Bluntly: Panasonic, which was once on the podium of the great Japanese manufacturers, has just announce that the Chinese company skyworth From now on, it will be in charge of producing and selling its televisions. At the catalog presentation event for this year, representatives of the Japanese brand they commented that the new partner “will lead sales, marketing and logistics while Panasonic provides expertise and quality assurance.” Speaking to FlatpanelsHD, Panasonic said Skyworth will take care of everything, but the resulting product will still be one that will have the “Panasonic” name. Turn towards China. The company had been outsourcing the production and functions of its models for years. mid-range and entrybut now that loss of identity is complete. With the move, the firm hopes to once again become one of the largest in both Europe and the United States, and the curious thing is that this announcement comes just a few weeks after Sony will outsource the production of its televisions to TCL. It is a symbolic turn because the Japan that previously led the technological conversation was gradually eclipsed by South Korea, Taiwan and, now, China. Both TCL and Skyworth are Chinese companies and, although TCL is much better known, Skyworth is not exactly small. Headquartered in Shenzhen, it has intermittently strained in the conversation of the main television manufacturers Android TV. It makes… sense. In statements to FlatpanelsHD, both companies will jointly develop the high-end OLED TVsand the movement has a very clear reading: it is a win-win for both companies, but as in the case of Sony-TCL, one wins -much- more than the other. Chinese companies have made a very strong investment in recent years in plants capable of producing an enormous quantity of large-inch panels. Televisions are manufactured from what is known as “mother glass”plates that, the larger the size, the more derived large-inch televisions will be produced. And if more televisions can be produced at a time, they can be sold at a lower price. TCL has state-of-the-art factories focused on that large-inch production, which helps explain why they sell 65- and 75-inch models at ridiculous prices. Therefore, with these associations, the Japanese hope that the muscle of the Chinese will help them achieve greater penetration. But, of course, it is undeniable that the names ‘Sony Bravia’ and ‘Panasonic’ are much more powerful than those of any Chinese brand, and now it is TCL and Skyworth that can exploit it in the market. Tears in the rain. In the end, as they say, of those muds, these muds. Panasonic, which was once one of the spearheads in terms of television technology thanks to plasma, had not made much of a splash for years in a conversation dominated by LG, Samsung and, by leaps and bounds, the Chinese. They were, along with Sony, the stronghold of a Japanese industry that had already seen how giants like Sharp, Pioneer or Toshiba they stayed in the gutter to be, in some cases, rescued by… Chinese companies (Toshiba by Hisense) or Taiwanese (Sharp by Foxconn). As they say, ‘mistakes were made’ and Panasonic held on for too many years to a plasma technology which was impressive, but also very expensive to produce and a huge ship that could not correct course when better LCD and OLED panels began to come out. As we say, we have to wait to see what this translates into in terms of market share, but in Japan it is a blow. Only with the joint venture of Sony and TCL, esteem that 50% of the Japanese market will be controlled by Chinese capital. The last pride they could hold on to was Panasonic. In Xataka |

What is and how does the Google application work to take photos with filters from old camera rolls?

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

Let’s explain to you what it is and how to use Snapseed Camerathe new camera application created by Google. This is a Snapseed feature that has so far reached the iPhone first, and it remains to be seen how long it will take to also reach Android. We are going to start the article by explaining what exactly this application is, or rather this function within an application. Then, we will tell you step by step how you can use it to give your photos a touch of personality. What is Snapseed Snapseed is an application created by Google to edit your photos and to be able to improve them. It is one of the oldest applications there is for this function, to edit all aspects of the photo such as brightness, contrast, saturation, etc., and also to crop it. One of the features that has always made Snapseed popular is that it is designed for one-handed use, with all settings being accessible and very easy to use with just your thumb. But of course, we live in times in which the processing of photos in the camera applications of any mobile phone already improves them automatically, so this type of applications has had to innovate. First, Snapseed has introduced a feature to enhance photos with AI without having to do anything. The app is simply responsible for making all the settings. And then, Snapseed Camera has also arrived. What is Snapseed Camera Snapseed Camera a feature within Snapseed. Specifically, it is a function for take photos directly with the appso it tries to be an alternative to the camera application on your mobile. The main feature of this camera is that it has preset filters to take the photo with them. You choose a filter, you see the result in a real image, and you decide to take the photo with them. But Snapseed Camera goes beyond that, because offers vintage camera filtersthose old photo reels. It also has some presets with preset settings, and allows you to make changes to textures and other types of adjustments before taking the photo, as if it were a professional camera. How to use Snapseed Camera To use Snapseed Camera, you have to enter the Snapseed app. In it, At the top right you have a camera iconand when you click on it you will go to Snapseed Camera with its options for taking photos. Now you will go to a screen where you simply have to slide to the sides to explore the filters of different movies that you have available. Every time you select a new one you will see the changes on the screen. And that’s it. Once you have selected the filter, you just have to take the photo and it will be added to the application gallery. You can also activate a pro mode to make changes to zoom and other aspects. In Xataka Basics | ChatGPT Images: what it is and how to use it to create images with artificial intelligence from your photos

This is how SETI managed to isolate 100 possible alien technosignatures

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

For more than two decades, millions of desktop computers around the world shared their computing power while they were ‘at rest’ with a common goal. This was nothing more than searching for extraterrestrial technological signatures in the noise of the cosmos. Now, the team behind SETI@home has published the final analysis of its dataclosing a fundamental chapter in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A cosmic funnel. The data analyzed by SETI@home come from observations made over 14 years using the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. During this time, the project operated by collecting data while the telescope was targeted by other astrophysical research. The immense amount of data recorded by this telescope was divided into small packages that were distributed over the Internet using the platform BOINC. In this case, more than five million volunteers lent the computing power of their PC processors to analyze these frequencies in the background with the legendary screensaver in the form of graphics with a latent pulse that crowned some PCs from the 2000s. All this thanks to a collaborative work that I started by installing a small application and giving up part of the processing power. What was seen. The result of all this information was nothing other than statistical outrage. Specifically, more than 12 billion initial detections were identified, and volunteers from there looked for energy spikes, narrowband pulses and signals with repetitive structures over time. The analysis focused on a 2.5 MHz band around the 1.42 GHz frequency, known as the hydrogen transition line, considered the logical “radio channel” for an interstellar civilization. The sieve end. Finding an alien signal in that mountain of data requires, first, discarding our own technological screams that we have in space. The second phase of the project consisted of cleaning those 12 billion detections from radio frequency interference. Aviation radars, television stations or even mobile phones constantly pollute the radio spectrum, not allowing us to see what is in the background. How it was done. The truly interesting thing about this project was how they managed to Separate the wheat from the chaff in a sea of millions of datasince the researchers designed complex algorithms with a very ingenious technique called ‘birdies’. The ‘birdies’ are nothing more than software-simulated alien technosignatures that the team artificially injected into the database. Its importance lies in that they simply serve to test the sensitivity of the system, since if the anti-noise filters erased the ‘birdies’ or failed to group them, it meant that the algorithm was failing, since it would also be eliminating possible data that pointed to extraterrestrial life. The result. In this way, the researchers were able to go from having 12,107,039,965 in their database to selecting 100 specific signals, which is where some type of communication with an extraterrestrial could be found. A titanic cleaning task, and it is where one of the most important points of all this research lies. The role of China. The problem with all this is that the Arecibo radio telescope in December 2020 prevented the original source of the data from being able to verify these findings. Fortunately, the gigantic rFAST adiotelescope in Chinacurrently the largest and most sensitive of its kind in the world, has taken over for the final stage. In this way, with a database of 100 signals and with 23 hours of observation time dedicated to the FAST, the different locations began to be re-observed. And it is not a quick process, since each re-observation at the Chinese telescope lasts about 15 minutes and includes a slow scan with the 19 beams of the FAST receiver. This is fundamental, because the sensitivity obtained in these new measurements is substantially better, reaching between 2.0 and 2.5 times the capacity of the original Arecibo data. The outcome. After all this, the question seems obvious: Does this mean that we have finally contacted an extraterrestrial intelligence? We must be honest and emphatic: no. To date, none of the signals analyzed or reobserved have been shown to be a repeatable or conclusive alien technosignature. However, from a technological and astronomical point of view, SETI@home has been a historic triumph, as it not only democratized computer science and pioneered the immense power of distributed computing for the masses, but it has established an open source framework and new documented sensitivity limits for the future. The use of high-computational birdie injection for end-to-end testing of analysis software is, in fact, a pioneering advance in radio astronomy. Images | SETI@Home Leo_Visions In Xataka | TRAPPIST-1 was the most promising solar system to search for life. Now our joy is in a well

their biggest problem is us

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

Of all the places in the world, the Limonium estevei “chose” a very specific place to live, evolve and develop: a beach in the municipality of Mojácar, in the southeastern end of the peninsula. What the poor thing didn’t know is that it was a bad place to survive. Scientists, however, have known this for a long time. Although they were wrong. The “Mojácar immortelle” is an ultra-endemism of the Mediterranean coast of Almería and, therefore, experts have feared for years that hybridization would wipe it out. But, all those years, the immortelle has held up. Now, a study from the University of Almería published in ‘Biodiversity and Conservation’ has discovered that, although there are hybrids with the L. cossonianumthe risk of this erasing the genetic identity of the species does not exist. Your problem is another. Location, location, location. The problem, as researchers have discovered, is that its persistence depends on preserving its edaphic niche. That is to say, it only grows in deliriously specific soils and if those soils disappear, the immortelle has a very difficult time. This would only be a problem if, by chance, the coastline were in danger. Because Limonium estevei It is a textbook species at risk: a single fragmented population highly dependent on its ecological niche that has no margin for survival in the face of changes in the ecosystem. And that ecosystem, unfortunately, has enormous tourist potential: Macenas, the beach in question, is in the spotlight of the construction companies in that area of the country. It’s a matter of time before it fills up with people. The great paradox of the Spanish coast. Although one of its main heritages is bioecological, the Spanish coast is a terrain with strong incentives to self-destruct. The Algarrobico It’s just a few meters away. In other words, what researchers have discovered is that yes, the culprit is tourism: a model that is based on residential use and the construction of recreational infrastructure on the beachfront. And we do not have clear tools to stop it. The immortelle is, like so many others, an example of everything that fails in the system. And what is worse, of everything that we cannot solve. Image | Juanjo In Xataka | 50 years ago a German started a futuristic paradise in Lanzarote. Nobody imagined that it would end up being the most famous ruin on the island

In Madrid they sell an apartment for 20.9 million euros. The question is not whether it is the most expensive in history, but what that means

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

He has earned the unofficial title “most expensive apartment in Madrid” and, although it is difficult to confirm it because in the luxury sector there are operations that never reach transcendence, it certainly has the potential to be so. To start with its price. The apartment that Property Partners announces in Jerónimos, in the heart of the capital, it costs a whopping 20.9 million euros. Beyond that figure, the home’s size (1,008 m2), display of luxuries and extras is striking. For example, it has no decoration. It has “works of art.” Not a typical main room, but a “social area” that covers about 200 m2. In any other advertisement that vocabulary might sound like an exaggeration. Not here. The most expensive apartment in all of Madrid? So suggests it Property Partners, which claims to have in its portfolio what is “considered” the “most expensive property in Madrid.” The same unofficial title has been recognized in recent days several economic means, premises and generalistsincluding Tele Madrid that refers to the luxurious apartment as “the most expensive in the history” of the city. In reality, it is very difficult to confirm whether this is the case or not because discretion prevails in the luxury market. Many operations are closed with hardly any publicity, almost with their backs to the market. Others don’t. Last year, without going any further, John Taylor, a French real estate company specializing in luxury, brokered the sale of a home that was valued at 20 million. The property in question was located near Retiro Park and measured about 1,100 m2. The 20.9 million flat announced by Property has been announced for several months, although the agency assures that “there are offer processes” underway and interested people who have already made several visits. Click on the image to go to the tweet. What is the housing like? Enormous. And that’s an understatement. According to the token Published by the real estate agency itself, the apartment has a constructed area of 1,008 m2, although it identifies 812 m2 as “housing area”. Seven bedrooms (five en suite), six bathrooms and three toilets are distributed throughout this vast space, as well as amenities such as a gym, wine cellar and large living rooms. A reporter from EPE was able to visit the apartment and says that one of the first things that catches your attention is a 200 m2 room named “social area”. Do we know more? Yes. And it points in the same direction: that of exclusive luxury. The house, located in Los Jerónimos, has five parking spaces and two storage rooms, terraces with views of the Botanical Garden and furniture in line with the profile of its market. Tele Madrid assures Its renovation alone cost two million, to which is added another for the furniture. As a finishing touch, it incorporates works of art. That the apartment (the agency dates it back to the 70s) is so spacious in the heart of the center is explained by its past: in reality it is made up of three independent homes that a former owner bought and mergedoccupying an entire floor. Why is it interesting? Because beyond how striking the price or the characteristics of the apartment are, the advertisement connects with a larger trend: the increase in price of the home. That the price per square meter has been rising for years (in Madrid and the rest of Spain) is nothing new. Idealistic sample that in the last year the m2 has skyrocketed by 14.8% in the capital, reaching a maximum of almost €5,900/m2, although there are certain areas where this value is much higher. In Retiro there are more than 7,800 and in Salamanca they are close to 10,000. The announcement of the Los Jerónimos apartment reminds us, however, that the price increase is not exclusive to the conventional residential market. It also affects luxury. At the end of 2025 Diza Market published a report which shows that the cost of prime housing in the region rose by 95% in a matter of a decade, between 2014 and 2025. The analysis focused, however, on the luxury sector in which houses worth several million are moved, without reaching stratospheric figures. Are there more indicators? Yes. Savills has published another report in which it points out that the price of prime housing in the capital “triples the rate of global growth expected for 2026.” “If we focus the analysis on the first consolidated, the average prices in Madrid are around €16,000-17,000/m2, reaching peaks of between €25,000 and €30,000/m2”, details Santiago de Miguel, director. “The forecast is that the market will continue slightly bullish, but with sustained demand. The international buyer continues to have his sights set on Madrid.” “The Madrid market super luxury has reached a degree of maturity that allows operations of this caliber,” agrees an interview with Five Days Felipe Reuse, from Property Partner. Data from the Notarial Statistical Portal show In fact, the dynamism of the market in the heart of Madrid, with the m2 above 11,000 m2, and where foreign buyers have a relevant weight, representing a third of the total. There are those who already points out that the demand is going outside the city, towards La Moraleja or La Finca. Image | Chris Curry (Unsplash) In Xataka | There is a Europe that is suffocating to pay for housing and another that lives in peace. And this map shows the differences

IBM has been living for decades that no one could kill COBOL. Anthropic has other plans

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

IBM shares fell about 13.2% yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange for a simple reason: Anthropic advertisement that its AI model, Claude, can be used to modernize systems that are based on the legendary COBOL programming language. And that is something that seemed virtually impossible. The immortal language. As Anthropic itself indicates, it is estimated that COBOL manages 95% of all transactions made at ATMs in the US. A 2022 study revealed that there are 800 billion lines of COBOL code that continue to operate in production systems on a daily basis. That almost no one uses anymore. Faced with this reality is another equally powerful one: almost no one programs in COBOL anymore, because this language has been with us for 65 years and has ended up being replaced by modern programming languages. The question, of course, is who is in charge of those millions of lines of code if there are almost no human programmers who can do it. Anthropic itself made it clear: “the number of people who understand COBOL decreases every year.” AI to the rescue. That’s where Claude, Anthropic’s family of generative AI models, comes in. According to this company, Claude is now capable of “modernizing” COBOL despite how difficult and expensive it was to carry out something like that. IBM has been trying for years and in fact applied that same recipebut its AI (Watson) does not seem to have managed too much progress. Claude helps, but there must be a human expert supervising. At Anthropic they promise that their AI model is capable of reading the entire code base of a COBOL project, identifying entry points, execution paths through subroutines, mapping data flows and documenting dependencies. They highlight, however, that with the supervision of a human expert this can help modernize and polish all types of COBOL-based systems. Critical systems. Of course, the question is whether AI will actually deliver on that promise, especially when we’re talking about absolutely critical systems used in financial transactions. According to Anthropic “the modernization of the code legacy It has been stagnant for years because understanding it cost more than rewriting it. “AI reverses that equation.” COBOL is no longer IBM’s ace in the hole. It’s hard to know how much of IBM’s business depended on COBOL systems, but it’s certainly a relevant part. In 2025 the company achieved revenue of $67.5 billion. About 45% comes from software. The rest is consulting and infrastructure, and this last division is where the IT business is included. IBM Z mainframesclosely linked to COBOL systems. It’s reasonable to think that revenues dependent on mainframes and COBOl are around 20% of IBM’s revenues (and probably more in profits). AI and the SaaSpocalypse. What happened with IBM and COBOL is the latest case of a software that seemed to have a long-term future but with AI may not have such a long-term future. Investors now seem to think that AI will replace many of these systems and SaaS platforms. It is indeed what has been called “SaaSpocalypse” in reference to the stock market falls of this type of companies in recent months: Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit and Atlassian have suffered notable falls in the stock market that are around 30-40% on average. But. This investor panic that is being experienced contrasts with the current reality: AI models are proving to be able to do surprising things in the field of programming, but they are far from being perfect. The code must be reviewed, and IBM itself he already made it clear In a 1979 training manual: “A computer can never be held responsible. Therefore, it should never make an administrative decision.” IBM has already survived other crises. The blue giant has suffered a blow to the stock market, but it is one of those technology companies that have managed to recover and resist all the attacks of an industry that is normally merciless. IBM itself also has its modernization solutions for its clients, and some analysts they are clear that in fact IBM will make more money than before if COBOL finally goes away. In Xataka | Old programmers never die, and Silicon Valley is realizing that

The US has cut programs for research and science. Europe and Spain are recruiting their scientists

February 24, 2026 by usatoday24

The Trump Administration has cut substantially the funds allocated to finance universities and, with them, the research projects that were being carried out, as as they point out from Nature. So American scientists have had no choice but to look for solutions to the draconian cuts in their country. Europe in general, and Spain in particular, they have become a magnet unexpected for all that talent, with programs that promise stability and million-dollar resources. Talent drain. According to information from the Ministry of Science, the call for the ATRAE program, aimed at incorporating researchers of international prestige with experience abroad in Spanish R&D centers, received 254 applications for the 2025 call. This implies an increase of 32% in applications, marking a historical record, because in 2023 no applications arrived from that country and in 2024 they only accounted for 16% of the total. 33.5% of them came from scientists from the US, which represents more than double that of previous editions. Finally, the scholarship program has selected 37 researchers in a program that allocates 38.9 million euros. Of the selected researchers, 56.7% come from American institutions and universities. Scientists who choose Spain. The Country collected the reasons why some of these researchers had decided to leave the US to continue their work in Spain. Vincenzo Calvanese, a 43-year-old Italian researcher who works at the Josep Carreras Institute in Barcelona after a decade in the United States, says that “many of my colleagues are having a very difficult time because of the political and economic events that affect science.” He encourages other colleagues to follow in his footsteps in Spain or other countries in Europesince the program represents “one of the few opportunities to ensure the future of research and some professional security.” Audrey Sawyer, a 43-year-old American hydrogeologist who has joined the research team at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, expresses a similar concern: “I have never seen a situation like this in the US. I feel very bad for the researchers and students, they are very talented and are facing serious challenges.” Although she applied before the most recent cuts, she clearly sees how federal funding affects areas like biomedicine and climate change. Europe: a troubled river gains fishermen. According to a survey made by Nature Among the US scientific community, 75% of researchers have seriously contemplated emigrating due to the cuts and layoffs promoted by Trump. In this scenario of uncertainty, Europe fights back taking out the nets to try to attract a good part of that talent dissatisfied with cuts in US research. The EU has doubled the funding of the European Research Council (ERC) with 500 million euros to provide it with more resources for these new researchers under the umbrella of the program Europe horizon. Spain distributes the incorporation of these new researchers in a balanced way: Catalonia receives 35.1% of the funding provided by these new scholarships, Madrid receives 29.7%, and entities such as the CSIC host 29.7% of the researchers. In this way, local research is reinforced with international talent, new students are trained and more funds are attracted from international competitions. The exodus is not only about science. The desire to leave the US does not only occur in the scientific field, some EU countries have doubled the number of residency applications and citizenship of US citizens. It is the case of Irelandwhich went from receiving 31,825 in all of 2024, to 3,692 applications during the month of February 2025 alone. Europe’s response to those requests has been different, tightening requirements to obtain residency or, as in the case of Spain, eliminating the “Golden Visa“which granted a residence permit in exchange of an economic investment. In Xataka | Of course digital nomads love Oviedo. It’s not because of the way of life: it’s because they charge 90,000 euros Image | Wikipedia, Unsplash (National Cancer Institute)

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