Mobile Tech & Gadgets

In 2016, a construction manager lost his 16,000 euro Rolex in a concrete pour. So he sued his company

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The story of a construction manager in Parma (Italy) has hit the local media for having lost a luxurious watch Rolex Daytona valued at around 16,000 euros while working on one of the construction sites that he had to supervise as part of his job. As if it were not striking enough that a construction worker (no matter how much of a construction manager he was) I had a Rolexand took him as if nothing had happened to an environment as hostile as a work in progress, the employee decided to add a twist to the drama of the story: sue the company, accusing it of being responsible for the loss of the valuable watch. Two courts had to show him what seemed obvious. Luxury formwork In May 2016, the person in charge of a construction site in the Italian city of Parma carried out the usual prior verifications when pouring concrete necessary to build the foundation of a building. Apparently nothing out of the ordinary in the reality of thousands of works anywhere in the world, except for the detail that this employee wore a Rolex Daytona on his wrist. In one of these verifications, the person in charge detected that one of the pumps in charge of pumping the concrete into the intended hole was not working properly, which prompted him to take control himself at that precise moment and personally manipulate the nozzle of one of the machines to instruct his colleagues on how to pour it correctly. While holding a metal chain anchored to the end of the concrete mixer chute to control the direction in which the material should be poured, he waited for the staff to reactivate the pump. It was then that, when the spill resumed, something happened that triggered the loss. According to the witnesses called to testify in the trial: “Within minutes of resuming concrete pouring, while still holding the supply pipe as described, another sudden blockage occurred. Without giving him time to break free and move away, the pipe moved with a sudden and violent jerk, with such force that it lifted him off the ground and threw him several meters away.” After the incident, the construction manager composed himself and warned that his Rolex Daytona had disappeared from his wrist: everything indicated that the valuable Swiss watch had disappeared in the middle of the quick-setting concrete. At that same moment, exhaustive searches were launched, even within the mix, but the watch was never recovered. Outraged by the mishap, the employee blamed both the company and the machinery for the accident and filed a lawsuit requesting full compensation for the lost watch due to the malfunction of the concrete pumping system. According to collect The Italian newspaper Corriere di Bologna, in its statement, stated verbatim: “You owe me my Rolex Daytona for 16,000 euros; it is your fault and the machine’s fault.” Common sense two courts Italian justice was clear, and it was clear on two occasions: the responsibility fell on the construction manager for not being sufficiently cautious. After lose the lawsuit In the first instance, the construction manager submitted the first ruling to the Court of Appeal of Bologna, which determined – for the second time – that “it is seriously unsustainable that directing the trunk of a concrete mixer to direct the pouring of concrete on foundations under construction is an activity that can be carried out wearing a 16,000 euro watch”, as literally stated in the ruling signed by judges Rossi, Gaudioso and Mazze who formed the court. In their resolution, the magistrates concluded that the employee did not adopt the essential “expertise and diligence” measures, which made any claim against the company inadmissible. For this reason, the employee not only lost the valuable watch, but was also forced to pay an additional 2,500 euros in legal costs. The Rolex it cost him money even after losing it. In Xataka | Rolex is tired of theft and counterfeiting: they want to use NFT chips and blockchain-based certificates of authenticity Image | Rolex, Unsplash (Troy Mortier)

whether Galicia is in its zone or not

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When on Monday, October 20, Pedro Sánchez advertisement that “the Government of Spain will propose to the EU to end the seasonal time change”, he did not suspect that he was about to reopen a much more arcane and unmanageable debate: that of Galicia and its time zone. And the Galicians are good when the subject is brought up to them. A historical claim. Internet is full of examples of this proverbial Galician anger. As they say, until 1940, Galicia (and, by extension, peninsular Spain) was in the zone of the United Kingdom and Portugal. It was a “temporary” measure that became permanent. And the consequences are more noticeable in Galicia because due to its geographical position it has very late sunrises in winter and extremely late sunsets in summer. “A scientific aberration.” In what we have been doing for centuries, the Galician Nationalist Bloc has promoted again and again the proposal of place Galicia in the same zone as Portugal. What’s more, in 2016, all the Galician parties asked that Spain returned to Greenwich zone. Without much success, really. And, despite the fact that it has been defended and studied a lot, the national response It’s been a permanent no. Because? Let’s go in parts, because this has a nutshell: during the Second World War, practically all of the countries of Western Europe changed time zone. In some cases, it was because of the invasion of Nazi Germany, yes; In others, it was a (more or less) voluntary decision by the different countries. Be that as it may, one after the other, they all switched to Berlin time. However, that is not what is striking. After all, in war situations, exceptional measures are taken. What is really striking is that, after the War, none of those countries returned to their previous zone. Not just Franco’s Spain, no: everyone. And the explanation, although it may not seem like it, is much more solid than it seems. But let’s talk about time zones… When in 1912 is celebrated the ‘Conférence internationale de l’heure radiotélégraphique’ and the 24 time zone system was approved, the lecturers turned to a very specific (and very useful) astronomical phenomenon: the fact that noon is stable throughout the year. That is, noon occurs almost every exact twenty-four hours and, therefore, establishing the time of each place in the world (adopting the time zone) turned out to be something really simple and revolutionary. Satisfied, they returned to their countries aware that they were making history. The whys were very clear… Although the First World War meant that the international time convention was not ratified by its members until 1919, everyone seemed convinced. After Versaillesthe different countries began to progressively unify their schedules. It didn’t really affect us. Spain was on the Greenwich meridian since January 1, 1901, like most European countries, under the Meridian conference of 1884. But there were many countries that did have to make important changes. After all, having a different schedule for each city (as was the case until then) made everything much more complex than necessary. “Normalizing” and “standardizing” the time was a key element for the desired ‘boom’ in rail transport, airships and incipient aviation: coordination costs were beginning to be unaffordable. Martin Olalla Martin Olalla …but people had other ideas. Despite rationalist optimism, the greatest experts knew that none of this was a magic solution. In 1844, the “father of spindles” Sandford Fleming had already said that, “The adoption of correct principles of time reckoning will not change or seriously alter the habits to which they are accustomed. They will not lose anything of value. The Sun will rise and set and regulate all social usages. (…) People will get up and go to bed, start and stop working, have breakfast or dinner at the same current time intervals, and our social habits and customs will not change.” And, indeed, people continued doing their thing. The problem is that this “his” consisted of something strange: suddenly, we began to realize that societies did not establish their schedules around noon, but around dawn. The most curious thing that almost all the countries in Europe discovered when changing to the Berlin time zone is that, in reality, what they were doing was adapting the civil time to the one that citizens actually had. That’s why no one went back to the old spindle: because it works better. Martin Olalla How does it work better? The best way to summarize it is with a phrase: “in winter, when it is daytime in Ourense, in Madrid, or in Barcelona; it is not daytime in London.” In fact, it is even daytime in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This does not depend on the time zone, it depends on the fact that the sun illuminates the spherical surface of the Earth. Does it work better for all of Spain? During autumn and winter, yes. Without any doubt. In spring and summer, things are not so clear. During these seasons, the sun hits much less obliquely and this means that the sunset fits much better with the time zones. The result is that the imbalance that we carry causes nightfall in Galicia much later than would be “normal” or desirable. This is a real problem, of course. But since the central issue is the variability with which the sun affects these areas, it is also not clear that introducing an extra time zone for Galicia (in the portuguese way) or for the Balearic Islands (as has also been claimed) will solve all the problems. I would trade one problem for another — let’s remember that Portugal has been one of the countries least open to eliminating the time change. But in addition, it would generate many coordination problems and very few comparative advantages. Image | MrMingsz (Wikimedia Commons) In Xataka | The war that ended at two different times: the time change has been giving Spaniards headaches for almost a century

They seemed like useful tools for WhatsApp Web, but they were part of a large spam campaign

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When it comes to using third-party applications and software that interact with WhatsApp, you have to be especially careful, since you never know what may lie in store for you. In this sense, a massive spam campaign has used 131 fraudulent extensions of Chrome to automate mass sending on WhatsApp Web, affecting more than 20,000 users. Researchers at cybersecurity firm Socket have reported of the operation, which has remained active for at least nine months. what has happened. According to the investigationthe extensions were presented as CRM or contact management tools for WhatsApp, promising to increase sales and improve productivity. Names like YouSeller, Botflow or ZapVende hid their true function: injecting code directly into WhatsApp Web to send massive messages without the user’s permission, bypassing the platform’s anti-spam systems. The spam business model. According to Socket, all extensions They shared the same code base and they came from a single Brazilian company, DBX Tecnologia, which sold a white label reseller program. Researchers say that affiliates paid about 2,000 euros in advance to rename the extension with their own logo and name, promising recurring income of between 5,000 and 15,000 euros. “The goal is to keep massive campaigns running while evading anti-spam systems,” explains security researcher Kirill Boychenko. How the fraud worked. The extensions used sophisticated techniques to manipulate WhatsApp Web. They ran alongside legitimate WhatsApp scripts, using internal functions to automate message sending. Users could configure send intervals, pauses, and batch sizes specifically designed to circumvent detection algorithms. According to the researcher, DBX Tecnologia even published tutorials on YouTube explaining how to adjust these parameters to prevent WhatsApp from blocking accounts. Why is it dangerous. Although these extensions are not considered malware classic, they also represent a significant risk. When an extension injects code into web applications like WhatsApp, it can read your messages, monitor your actions, and send automated content using your account. The extensions had full access to the page WhatsApp Webpotentially allowing them to access private conversations and personal data. What to do now. According to firm, Google has already removed the extensions from its store, although they were available for more than nine months, accumulating tens of thousands of downloads. If you have installed any extension related to WhatsApp or message automation and it appears in the list of extensions provided by the research, you must delete it immediately. To do this, access ‘chrome://extensions‘ in your browser, review the entire list and uninstall any suspicious or unrecognized tools. Above all, pay attention to extensions that request permissions to access all websites or modify page data. Just because it’s in the store doesn’t mean it’s safe.. Socket recommends Regularly review installed extensions, reject those that ask for excessive permissions, and be wary of tools that promise to “boost” popular services. The presence of an extension in the Chrome Web Store does not guarantee security, as well as in the rest of the extension and application stores. Cover image | AI-generated with Gemini In Xataka | It’s a matter of time before WhatsApp ends up filling your phone’s memory, unless you do these three things

Van Gogh’s Ear fans before and after Amaia

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Whoever believed that Amaia Montero’s return to La Oreja de Van Gogh was going to be an all-day controversy to monopolize a couple of headlines, can review their preconceptions about the energy that a force of nature that we did not expect is willing to invest in this issue: the band’s fan clubs. It is some of these groups who are crying foul, and some of them are even closing their doors, due to the return of the original vocalist and the bad manners with which her replacement, Leire, has been expelled from the band. The story so far. Basically: Amaia Montero was the original vocalist of the band from 1996 to 2007, a period in which the group achieved great success with albums such as ‘Copperpot’s Journey’. He left the band in 2007 to start a solo career, officially without conflict, although the relationship with the band deteriorated. Her personal career had ups and downs and public health problems that affected her image, including difficult moments and turning her into a very juicy meme for social networks. Her replacement, Leire Martínez, was a vocalist for 16 years, with five successful albums and concerts, but without reaching Amaia’s level of popularity. Leire’s departure in October 2024 was official and peaceful, but suffered internal tensions. I would speak later that she had felt displaced and that she regretted not having given a decent closure to her time in the band. In October 2025, Amaia returns as a vocalist, just a year after Leire’s departure, which unleashed a strong division between fans of both singers on social networks. The band deleted references to Leire, increasing the conflict and Pablo Benegas, co-founder, left the band without explanation. Complete cessation of business. However, Amaia Montero’s return to La Oreja de Van Gogh has generated a notable division among the group’s fans, triggering protests and even closing several fan clubs. This phenomenon reflects a deep discordance in the community’s perception and values ​​regarding the group’s decisions, something that is undoubtedly difficult to manage from a fan club. For example, clubs The Goonies and LOVG Lyrics have announced their dissolution, alleging that the way in which Amaia’s return has been planned does not coincide with their values ​​of respect for the history of the group or for Leire. It’s Amazon’s fault. At least, it’s the fault that yesterday the sale of tickets for the recently announced reunion tour “So many things to tell”, which starts in spring 2026, had to be suspended momentarily. He Massive problem on Amazon Web Services servers which affected ticket sales started a few hours later than planned, but demand was very high: they sold more than 100,000 tickets in one hour and they had to hang the sign sold out (and extend dates) in several Spanish cities, such as Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona.​ Nostalgia vs. fandom. The good result of ticket sales reveals a clear contradiction among fans. On the one hand, there are the hardline fans who are filling the band’s official networks with comments like “Van Gogh’s Ear is not coming back, Judas’s Kiss is coming back,” and on the other, the 10,000 buyers who are selling out tickets in large venues for a bath of genuine nineties nostalgia. Van Gogh’s Ear is showing that what interests him are not the renegades or the (comparatively much less) fans of Leire, but rather making cash with a return, that of Amaia, which is pure distilled Gen X nostalgia. That is possibly why Pablo Benegas left the training. It’s not the same. This same week, Jotdown has published an article in which they influence this abandonment and make it clear that La Oreja de Van Gogh, without Benegas, is not the same: he is the composer of all their classic songs and his flight from Amaia’s return shows that there is no will to restart a coherent creative trajectory, but that the band is only going to express the nostalgia of their old hits, perhaps without a desire for continuity. Without Benegas, without Leire and with the fans against it, it remains to be seen if there is a future beyond a few very substantial comeback concerts. In Xataka | The 51 musical gems to listen to if you don’t want to miss the best of the 21st century

give you money to buy a house

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In a context in which the housing is one of the main actors of territorial inequality In Spain, some rural municipalities have decided to intervene by directly offering money to whoever is willing to move and buy. We are not facing a “return to the countryside”, but rather public programs with specific amounts designed to reverse decades of population loss and to reactivate areas where the demographic decline has already had visible consequences in services, economic activity and social structure. National panorama. It is estimated that more than 3,400 municipalities Spaniards have been at structural demographic risk for years. They occupy almost the entire interior territory, but they barely concentrate the 10% of the population. The cumulative output of inhabitants deteriorated schools, commerce and employment, which in turn accelerated emigration to large cities. That loop has been difficult to reverse with soft incentives. Hence, the novelty of the current moment is the leap to material incentives to try to generate real population movement in the opposite direction for the first time in decades. Urban crisis and opportunity. While the rental and purchase markets in capitals such as Madrid, Barcelona or Malaga have become directly prohibitive For average incomes, much of inland Spain has a inverse problem: abundance of empty houses, low demand and shrinking economic bases. Urban pressure and rural emptying are not separate phenomena, but rather two sides of the same territorial asymmetry. And that is where the logic of pay to move: displace population where there is idle capacity and alleviate, at least on the margin, the residential saturation of metropolitan areas. An idea that already we had seen beforenot only in Spain, also in Italy. The DIVA program. He DIVA plan in the north of Cáceres it is possibly the clearest and most quantified initiative. Offers up to 15,000 euros to people who move to the towns in the region and telework from there, yes, with a minimum registration obligation of 24 months (and 36 for full payment) and accredited continuity of remote work activity. The overall endowment amounts to 200 million and its stated goal is to attract about 200 new stable residents. It does not finance residential tourism or second homes: it requires effective permanence and sustained employment relationships over time. Castilla y León. Here the Board grants up to 2,000 euros to families who move to small municipalities and acquire housing there. The amount starts at 1,000 euros for units without children and goes up to 2,000. for families with minors. The aid is processed after registering and requires establishing residence effective in the municipality. The objective is to induce purchase and roots in localities that have been losing density for decades, reinforcing stable tenure as a mechanism of permanence. Valladolid. The Provincial Council guide the program to young people from 18 to 36 years old in towns with less than 20,000 inhabitants, with income limits of up to 33,600 euros per year. For purchase with a mortgage it covers up to 10 installments (maximum €4,000), and for rehabilitation it covers up to 80% of the technical fees also with a limit of €4,000. The design seeks to lower the initial financial entry barrier to rural property among profiles that, without incentive, would choose to remain in stressed metropolitan areas. Rioja. He Revive Plan grants between 20,000 and 40,000 euros to those who buy housing in municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants and occupy it as their habitual residence. The maximum amount is reserved for towns of up to 500 inhabitants where depopulation is more acute. The property cannot exceed 180,000 euros and it must be inhabited within a maximum period of time after the purchase, maintaining a minimum residence of five years. The incentive does not finance rotation: it requires roots measurable in time. Navarre. Navarre guide the help to those under 35 years of age who buy housing in towns with less than 5,000 inhabitants or in non-urban areas up to 20,000. The subsidy is calculated as a percentage of the price with limits per square meter, so that an 80 m² apartment below 153,827 euros can be partially subsidized. The final requirement is habitual residence. The program is not about subsidized rent, but rather about establishing ownership as a mechanism for demographic return. Conditions, intention and limits. All programs share or repeat two traits: They seek continuous residence, not opportunistic mobility, and subordinate the aid to documentary proof of real roots (registration, habitual use, periods of permanence and, in the case of Ambroz, effective teleworking). The design, as we said at the beginning, seeks to induce functional repopulationnot symbolic. Of course, its scope is limited in scale, but it represents a phase change: for the first time there is competition for population with direct incentives. In a country where the cities seem to be expelling the citizens for the cost, and the interior collapses due to vacuumpaying to move stops being an anecdote and becomes an instrument of territorial policy. Image | Diego Delso In Xataka | The pistachio has worked an unexpected wonder: generating thousands of jobs in the fields of Castilla-La Mancha In Xataka | In rural Salamanca someone has had an idea to revitalize the towns: give you the bar

NASA has had enough of SpaceX and will offer the return to the Moon to other companies. Elon Musk has not taken it well at all

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NASA’s strategy to return to the Moon has just been blown up. In a series of television appearances and public statements, the acting administrator of the US space agency, Sean Duffy, has announced a change of course: NASA is going to reopen the public tender to build the manned lunar landing module (HLS), a contract that until now was held by SpaceX alone for the Artemis III and IV missions. Because. The official reason is transparent: “We are in a race against China,” confirmed Duffy in an interview with CNBC. And in this race, “SpaceX is falling behind.” “Competition and innovation are the keys to our dominance in space, so NASA will open HLS production to Blue Origin and other large American companies.” “The president and I want to reach the moon during this president’s term.” The decision ends NASA’s “all-to-SpaceX” bet and reopens a multibillion-dollar battle for the most crucial contract in modern space exploration. As expected, Elon Musk has not remained silent. The hell of space refueling. To understand NASA’s frustration, you have to look beyond the delays in Starship test flights. The real bottleneck is the mission architecture itself. As analyzes Daniel Marín in Eurekathe lunar version of Starship is a giant 52-meter rocket that cannot reach the Moon without first refueling in low Earth orbit. This operation is of unprecedented complexity due to Starship’s cryogenic liquid fuel, which tends to evaporate. This is not a simple fuel transfer; It requires multiple launches of tankers (up to 15 or 20) to fill one or several orbital tanks that will then transfer hundreds of tons of liquid methane and oxygen to the lunar Starship. It is a technology that has never been tested on this scale. While SpaceX continues to deal with problems with its prototypes (Musk assures that version 3 of Starship will be able put 100 tons of cargo into orbit in 2026, but that was precisely the promise with version 2), NASA has gotten nervous. Every SpaceX delay is an unforeseen victory for China, whose lunar program is advancing at a methodical pace to put astronauts on the Moon before 2030. The Chinese Lanyue lunar module is much simpler than Starship. Plan B is Blue Origin. Duffy’s statement is not a bluff. There are already at least two clear alternatives on the table that NASA is seriously considering. Plan B is Blue Origin. But when Duffy mentions Blue Origin, he is not referring to the Blue Moon Mk 2 HLS module that Jeff Bezos’ company is already developing for the future Artemis V mission (and which, ironically, also requires complex orbital refueling). As revealed Eric Berger in Ars TechnicaBlue Origin has been quietly developing a plan B: a modified version of its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. This vehicle, originally designed for cargo only, would be adapted to carry crew. Its great advantage: it would not require refueling in space. It would be a much simpler and faster solution, that we had already mentioned in Xataka. Plan C is Lockheed Martin. Duffy also said “maybe others.” Those “others” are the giants of the traditional aerospace industry, with Lockheed Martin at the helm. Traditional NASA contractors have assured Duffy that they can build an Apollo-style lunar module in 30 months. The proposal, backed by analysis like this one from SpaceNewswould be based on proven technologies: storable propellants (that do not evaporate like cryogenic methane and hydrogen) and already operational subsystems, such as those of the Orion spacecraft. Bob Behnken, vice president of Lockheed Martin, told Ars Technica who are up for the challenge: “We have been working with a cross-industry team… to address Secretary Duffy’s request to meet our country’s lunar goals.” Does it stick? The price. A contract of this type, cost-pluscould skyrocket to $20 or $30 billion, compared to $2.9 billion in the original SpaceX contract. But for Duffy, price appears to be a secondary factor if it guarantees arriving before China. Elon takes out the flamethrower. Elon Musk’s reaction to the threat of losing his lunar monopoly has been visceral and has come in several waves of tweets. First, Musk defended his company’s work. “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Plus, Starship will end up doing the entire lunar mission. Mark my words.” He then moved on to direct attack against your rival with an incendiary claim: “Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone to the Moon.” The tweet was quickly corrected by Community Notes of X, who reminded Musk that Blue Origin did reach orbit with its NG-1 mission on January 16, 2025. From contempt to insult. Seeing what was coming at him, Musk began to despise the very objective of the Artemis III mission. “A permanently manned lunar science base would be much more impressive than a repeat of what Apollo already did incredibly well in 1969.” A clear message: the race that NASA wants to win is irrelevant. Finally, the SpaceX CEO responded directly to a post by Sean Duffy about the “race against China” with a meme of a Ugandan anti-LGBT activist repeatedly asking “Why are you gay?” A derogatory reaction that makes it clear how bad the announcement felt. Beat China or beat Trump? While the “race against China” is the public justification, Ars Technica suggests a much more mundane domestic political plot. Sean Duffy is not the permanent administrator of NASA, but rather the acting Secretary of Transportation. According to the outlet’s sources, Duffy is immersed in a “fierce internal battle” to keep the job permanently, a position that the billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacmanwho apparently has regained his good rapport with President Trump. Duffy’s television appearances would, in reality, be a political maneuver aimed at a single viewer: the president. By showing himself as a leader of action and results, willing to do anything to “beat the Chinese” and achieve a moon landing during Trump’s presidential term (which ends in January 2029), Duffy … Read more

OpenAI founder says AI does not imitate brains

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Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and former head of AI at Tesla, has offered a radically different view on the current state of AI in an extensive interview with Dwarkesh Patel. Faced with overwhelming optimism, he maintains that current systems are “digital ghosts” that imitate human patterns, not brains that evolve like animals. His prediction: AGI Functional will arrive in 2035, not 2026. Why is it important. Comparisons between AI and biological brains are dominating technical discourse and guiding many investment decisions. Karpathy argues that this analogy is “misleading” and raises unrealistic expectations. His experience leading autonomous driving at Tesla for five years has given him a unique perspective on the gap between killer demos and truly functional products. The difference. Animals evolve over millions of years, developing instincts encoded in their DNA. A zebra runs minutes after being born thanks to that “pre-installed hardware.” Language models learn by imitating text from the Internet without anchoring that knowledge in a body or a physical experience. “We’re not building animals,” he says. “We are building ethereal entities that simulate human behavior without really understanding it.” Ghosts. The problem of reinforcement learning. Karpathy says that the RL (reinforcement learning) current is “terrible” because it rewards entire trajectories instead of individual steps. If a model solves a problem after a hundred failed attempts, the system reinforces the entire path, including the errors. We humans reflect on each step and adjust. The collapse. The models suffer from “entropy collapse”: When they generate synthetic data to self-train, they produce responses that occupy a very small space of possibilities. ask ChatGPT one joke and you’ll get three repeated variants. Poor human memory is an advantage: it forces us to abstract. The LLM They remember perfectly, which allows them to recite Wikipedia but prevents them from reasoning beyond the memorized data. Between the lines. Karpathy saw that Claude Code and OpenAI agents proved useless for complex code during development. nanochat. They work with repetitive code that abounds on the Internet, but fail when faced with new architectures. “Companies generate slop“, he said. “Perhaps to raise financing.” The core. Their proposal: build models with a billion parameters (dwarf compared to those most used today) trained with impeccable data that contain thinking algorithms, but not factual knowledge. The model would look for information when it needs it, just like we do. “The Internet is full of garbage,” he explains. Giant models make up for that dirt with raw size. With clean data, a small model could feel “very smart.” The unexpected turn. Karpathy expects no explosion of intelligence, only continuity. Computers, mobile phones, the Internet: none have altered the GDP curve. Everything is diluted in the same ~2% annual growth. “We are experiencing an explosion,” he said, “but we see it in slow motion.” His prediction: AI will follow that pattern, spreading slowly through the economy, without causing the abrupt jump to 20% growth that some have anticipated. In Xataka | Privacy is dying since ChatGPT arrived. Now our obsession is for AI to know us as best as possible Featured image | Dwarkesh Patel

We know that the price of housing in the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands is skyrocketing because neither the British nor the Germans can afford it.

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The price of housing in highly stressed tourist areas, such as the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, has reached levels so high that neither the British nor the Germans, traditionally the most active foreign buyers and wealthy people on the islands, can afford to continue acquiring properties at the rate of previous years. As and how they collected in Express this trend well supported by the latest data of the General Council of Notaries, in which a very relevant change can be seen in the Spanish real estate market, especially on the islands, where international demand has always been noted as part of the problem. Fewer houses are sold. According to the log data Notaries, during the first half of 2025, the Balearic and Canary Islands have experienced a real turnaround in the home buying and selling market. The percentage of home sales by foreigners fell by 7.7% in the Canary Islands and 6.8% in the Balearic Islands during the first half of 2025. In the same period, only two territories showed a behavior similar to the islands: Valencia, which fell by 3.6% and Navarra, which reduced the number of purchase and sale operations with foreigners by 3.7%. The reason: too expensive housing. It is enough to continue reviewing the data provided by the College of Notaries to find one of the reasons that could have caused this. drop in trading volume: prices have skyrocketed. The figures show how the traditional appeal for British and German buyers is declining. The data reveal that the average price paid by foreigners in purchase and sale operations in Spain as a whole was 2,417 euros per square meter, which represents an increase of 7.6% compared to the price in 2024. Non-resident foreigners continue to pay higher amounts for their homes (€3,126/m2) than resident foreigners (€1,912/m2) and nationals (1,809 €/m2). In the Canary Islands the average price rose by 14.1%, far exceeding the national average, while in the Balearic Islands the average increase was up to 9% compared to 2024. Source: General Council of Notaries Foreigners continue buying in Spain. The data indicate that the volume of foreign sales operations in Spain has not decreased in the territory as a whole, where the total number of homes bought by foreigners increased 2% compared to last year, reaching 71,155 operations. This variation in the volume of operations on the islands, together with the increase in their price, leads us to suspect that price pressure is differentially affecting the most touristic and stressed areas, especially those that, as in the case of the islandsthe options to expand the surface area for residential housing are very limited. That is to say, it is not that foreigners are buying less, but that they are doing so in less tense and with more reasonable prices. Who buys in Spain? Despite the drop in sales from the islands, the British continue to lead the list of foreign buyers in Spain, with 5,731 registered transactions, followed by Moroccans (5,654 transactions) and Germans (4,756 purchases and sales). However, operations carried out by foreigners represented 19.3% of total sales, a slightly lower proportion than that registered in 2024 with 20.3%. This loss of prominence is felt above all in the islands, where the British and Germans clearly dominated the statistics. The end of the “Golden Visa”. Besides, the advertisement of the elimination of the so-called golden visas or “Golden Visa”“, which allowed you to obtain residency in Spain in exchange for investing a certain amount of money in real estate, has also conditioned the decline in demand. In the first six months of 2025, foreign residents accounted for 60.9% of the purchases made, which represents 6.4% more than the previous year. On the other hand, non-resident foreigners who were affected by the elimination of the ‘Golden Visa’ and had to assume new tax limits, they reduced their purchases by 4.1%. In Xataka | Hoteliers dream of hanging the sign full in 2025. The rent that their employees must pay is their worst nightmare Image | Unsplash (Boris Busorgin)

its Yangwang U9 Xtreme is already the fastest on the Nürburgring

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Breaking the barrier of the mythical seven minutes in the Green Hell and dethroning the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra as the fastest (production) electric car in the world. He Yangwang U9 has once again broken another record and BYD has fully entered the race to boast of achievements every kilowatt. And BYD announced this morning that its Yangwang U9 Xtreme It is already the fastest electric car on the Nürburgring, the legendary German circuit that continues to be the place where those who want to demonstrate that they have the best and most advanced product meet. Specifically, it has been its U9 Xtreme version, the same one with which last summer the company top speed was close to 500 km/hwith which BYD has seen the 20,832 meters of the famous route. With just a few tenths of a second left before the clock reached seven minutes, the electric supercar has crossed the finish line. Specifically, the Yangwang U9 China as a reference BYD does not mention that this “previous record” was held by the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, which with its street version had stopped the clock last June at 7’04″957. At that time, the Chinese firm expelled the Chinese firm from the throne. Porsche Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach packagewhich in 2023 certified a new record for an electric car half a second higher. Of course, what BYD has achieved with its Yangwang U9 Xtreme is the record for a production electric car, since the car is limited to 30 units. Xiaomi continues to hold the circuit record for a four-door electric car. And just a year ago, the company stopped the clock at 6’46″874. The difference was that this car was specially prepared for the circuit and, therefore, it is not a unit in production, no matter how limited the run may be. BYD’s milestone is important because they show that their car is not just fast in a straight line. The record in the Green Hell with a car capable of approaching 500 km/h top speed gives an idea of ​​its versatility. “It is not only the fastest car in the world in maximum speed, but also a vehicle with the performance and dynamic qualities necessary to break lap records on a circuit with a wide variety of curves,” said Stella Li, once the new record was known. As for the man who has been able to take the Yangwang U9 Xtreme to the new record, Moritz Kranz He is a renowned driver whose presence in the GT category has allowed him to travel “almost 10,000 laps” of the circuit, in the company’s words. All in all, he needed to tame a supercar that equips four high-performance engines that can reach 30,000 rpm and whose combined power exceeds 3,000 HP. Of course, the Yangwang U9 This brand also allows BYD to show the best of itself beyond pure performance. With Yangwang, the Chinese company has presented its intelligent suspension system that allows the car drive on three wheels or even jump to dodge an obstacle. But let him also navigate riversas the Yangwang U8 does by pulling the pure power of its engines. Photo | BYD In Xataka | BYD already has its luxury brand in Europe: Denza sweeps away any prejudice with a Z9GT that is a technological arsenal

not only its drones come from China, but also Ukraine’s latest army

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In the month of October there was an anomaly for Ukrainian troops. Reconnaissance drones began to spot unknown figures among Moscow’s soldiers. It was known that there were north koreansbut a new front began to increase as the days went by: Cubans. Now, in an unpredictable turn of events, kyiv is being joined by a most unexpected group: Chinese. Why are there Chinese? The story was told in an extensive report by The Guardian newspaper. Although the contingent is still small, they speak of a few dozen, the very existence of Chinese fighting on the Ukrainian side is politically significant because contradicts the story that Beijing, as a social bloc, massively supports the invasion of Russia. Most of these volunteers did not set out as combatants from the beginning, but rather as observers or humanitarian volunteers: they arrived, saw direct damage to civilians, and concluded that simply donating or showing compassion was not enough. Cases like Tim’swho was scarred after seeing the bodies in the kyiv children’s hospital, and jumped into combat from the simple idea that his inaction would have been worse than the risk. There is no epic in his story: there is a feeling of moral urgency and the point of no return once the violence is seen in the first person. Disenchantment as a driving force. He explained the British media that these decisions are not only born from the war, but from a previous trajectory of personal wear within China: unemployment structural, feeling of vital stagnation, deterioration of freedoms and closure of civic space after the pandemic. Both Tim and Fan, another of the combatants, they express the same with different languages: to stay was to remain tied to a life that for them was not moving forward and that, as they saycould not be questioned publicly. War, paradoxically, offers them what they lacked: the ability to act, a real transformation of their own destiny and an environment where, although there is enormous physical risk, there is also room for personal decision. At least for them, it is more rational to risk their lives on a foreign front than to remain “frozen” in their country with no option to change. Public opinion. A investigation Tao Wang of Manchester Metropolitan University concluded that 80% of Chinese Respondents held pro-Russian views during the first year of the war and that “government-controlled media managed to influence public opinion in favor of Russia” as the war progressed. The volunteers they described an ecosystem where the pro-Kremlin narrative seemed the only one that circulated without cost, while sympathizing with Ukraine was seen as “deviation” and could bring social or legal consequences. That is why dissent seems like a rare bird: not because it does not exist, but because, according to the studyit is not safe to express it. Prudential asymmetry. Plus: the operating path is not symmetrical. There is a lot of pro-mercenary content for Russia that circulate in Chinese networks without brakes (video above), while finding instructions for enlisting in Ukraine requires bypassing censorship, using VPN and, as In the case of Fangetting to ask an AI where to start. Furthermore, the Guardian indicated that the risk to coming back is real: relatives questioned, possible ambiguous charges, surveillance. In other words, the State tolerates (and sometimes facilitates) the pro-Russian participationbut forces those who decide otherwise to go underground. This difference in cost explains why the pronuclear group with Ukraine is small, although it does not invalidate its relevance as a symptom. Limited military value. There is no doubt, militarily, these few dozen do not change the balance of the conflict. Symbolically, they confront part of the official discourse. They demonstrate that the legitimacy of the Beijing-Moscow alliance It is not socially homogeneous, or it is not always so, and that there is also a layer that rejects it when it has room to act. For Ukraine, its value possibly lies in proving that even in China there are citizens who consider the invasion unjustifiable and enough to risk their lives to stop it. What are they looking for? When the Guardian I asked them why take risks for a foreign country, the answers were not geopolitical but vital: the idea of ​​building a life in another environment, giving a different future to your children and/or demonstrating that your identity as Chinese is not automatically tied to the State or its foreign policy. In it Tim’s caseis also a message towards prejudices: nothing should be taken for granted about any society, much less just because the State is going in the opposite direction. Thus, the gesture of these unlikely recruits in the Ukrainian war once again demonstrates that the sides are invisible. If the Cubans went to Ukraine for an issue purely economicthe Chinese seem to do it for a much more vital issue. Image | LAC Chad Sharman, IToldYa In Xataka | Ukraine brought its drones closer to the Russian army. Their surprise is capital: the North Koreans are now Cubans with an irresistible promise In Xataka | In 2023, a pilot from Ukraine had an idea for Star Wars. Not only did it go well: his kamikaze plan has rewritten the war manual

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