Mobile Tech & Gadgets

mining and industrial ponds

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Spain has its eyes riveted on the intense rains this week in Andalusia. According to meteorological expertsbetween 60 and 80 liters were expected, but the orography has acted as a wall causing accumulations of 180 liters, a scenario where the technology has failed by more than double in a short-term prediction. However, while the cameras focus on the water running through the streets of white towns, a much quieter and potentially devastating threat is brewing far from the media spotlight. The real technical and military concern lies in the stability of the industrial waste infrastructure in the province of Huelva and part of Seville. Over there, as detailed in the local pressis located the largest toxic waste deposit in Europe. It is a time bomb composed of mud and heavy metals that is being subjected to a water stress test without recent precedents. What has happened to the mining ponds? Before the arrival of the storm Leonardothe reaction of the authorities has been of unusual speed. Yesterday, the management of the Emergency Plan for the Risk of Floods commissioned the Military Emergency Unit (UME) to carry out an urgent analysis and assessment of the situation of these deposits. Officially, the message it’s calmsince the regional emergency service assures that the work carried out has provided “complete peace of mind” and that “no incident or probable risk” has been detected. However, the reality on the ground shows a different operational tension. Far from limiting itself to observing, the UME has taken direct action with a massive deployment: a contingent of more than 250 soldiers and 90 specialized vehicles has been mobilized to the area. According to Andalusian public televisionthe troops have installed a retaining wall using “Hesco Bastion” and heavy machinery in the Los Frailes mine, in Aznalcóllar, because the rainwater is already carrying pyrite and they are seeking to prevent it from draining into the reservoir at all costs. The war of stories. The situation has caused a mix of messages between political prudence, business demands and social alarm. The president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, has been unusually explicit about the nature of the danger. As you have collected ABCthe Andalusian president has justified the military mobilization by the need for anticipation, crudely warning that these facilities are “mining ponds that could overflow with materials, some of which are toxic, especially in a very special way in the province of Huelva.” Faced with this political warning, the industry’s response has been blunt. The company Atalaya Riotinto Minera has issued a statement guaranteeing the safety of the waste deposits at the Riotinto mine. They ensure that their facilities operate normally in accordance with strict technical standards and that these exceptional situations “have been contemplated in the design and construction”, with adequate safety margins. Furthermore, the company wanted to emphasize that it maintains “full communication and coordination” with the competent authorities and the Civil Guard for continuous monitoring of the situation. At the other extreme, political voices like Izquierda Unida They warn that this is not a drill. The training indicates that the ponds, which accumulate toxic materials after decades of exploitation, enter a “potential situation of risk of breaking” due to the pressure of the water on the slopes. Its provincial coordinator has denounced the “historical inability” to maintain these soils and demands a truthful diagnosis in real time, describing the situation as a non-hypothetical risk. The ghost of ’98. The fear that runs through the spine of western Andalusia has a memory. The inevitable reference is the disaster of Aznalcóllar from 1998but the current dimensions are much larger. The main focus of the threat today is located in the Riotinto Mining Basin, in the Gossan, Cobre and Aguzadera dams. This complex stores more than 182 million cubic meters of sludge, an amount that exceeds thirty times the volume of the spill that caused the ecological catastrophe almost three decades ago. Environmental organizations provide disturbing data on current operators. They recall that the Aznalcóllar mine is now managed by a subsidiary of Grupo México, a company with a history of pond failures in its country of origin, such as the one in the Sonora River in 2014. In addition, they denounce that there were already prior warnings: in March 2025, during other intense rains, an episode of contamination occurred in the Agrio counter-reservoir due to runoff from the mine. ANDthenWhat are the forecasts? The current problem is not only the amount of water that falls, but where it falls. As meteorology experts explain“it rains in the wet.” The month of January already broke historical records with accumulations of 1,300 liters in some areas, leaving the soil, composed mainly of clay, completely saturated. The infiltration rate is zero; The ground no longer supports even one more drop. This takes us to a limit hydrological situation. The reservoirs of the province of Huelva are at 85.83% of its capacity, a figure much higher than the average of recent years. This has forced the Board to carry out preventive and controlled discharges in seven of the eight dams it manages to guarantee their safety. However, the greatest physical danger in mining ponds is technical, that is, the risk of sludge liquefaction. The experts warn that An episode of extreme rain increases the hydrostatic pressure on the retaining walls. If this occurs, the mud can lose its solid behavior and suddenly collapse the structure. There is one more threat. Beyond the mines, the Huelva orography hides another critical point: the phosphogypsum ponds in the Tinto marshes. There are 1,200 hectares that accumulate 120 million tons of industrial waste just a few kilometers from the capital. Studies add a factor of instability additional, since a “progressive sinking of the land” has been detected in this area. Added to this scenario is the opacity denounced by social groups. Ecologists in Action claims to have requested repeatedly provided information on surveillance reports on the raised walls in Riotinto and on the company’s financial guarantees … Read more

Anthropic has taken Apple’s strategy against Microsoft to the Super Bowl: making using the rival look ridiculous

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Anthropic has opened the Super Bowl by attacking OpenAI with ads that show virtual therapists advertising dating apps and personal trainers selling boosts for short people. The message: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude“(“The ads are reaching the AI. But not Claude.”) Sam Altman has responded in X calling them “dishonest” and accusing them of “doublespeak“, “double speech” in Spanish, although a better adapted translation could be “deceptive language” or simply “hypocrisy.” It seems like a minor skirmish, two rivals fighting over an advertisement. But under that hood is a billion-dollar question: What kind of business will AI be when it’s established? The history of the Internet is summarized in two great models: One free supported by advertising: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok… regardless of whether they have premium versions. Other direct payment by subscription: Netflix, DAZN, Disney+, Apple Music, PSN… The first aims to maximize the audience, the second aims to maximize the revenue per user. The AI ​​is right now deciding which of the two paths it takes. In Xataka AI is breaking one of the oldest economic paradigms in history: that cheap equals "bad" OpenAI has already chosen and is starting to test putting ads on free ChatGPT accounts. Altman justifies it with the classic argument of democratization: “More Texans use free ChatGPT than the total number of people using Claude in the United States.” In other words: they want to reach those billions of people who are not going to pay 20 dollars a month. And for that you need advertising. Anthropic chooses the opposite. “Anthropic offers an expensive product to rich people,” Altman reproaches him. In a way, it is true: Claude is betting above all on contracts with companies and premium subscriptions of 20, 100 and 200 dollars per month. Their model depends on the AI ​​being valuable enough for you to pay for it. And so that you look from time to time to the higher plan with the temptation to go up one more step. Without advertising, without sponsored links and without responses being influenced by advertisers. The difference is not only business, it is product. An AI with advertising has different incentives than one without it. What happens when you ask the assistant what car to buy you and there is a manufacturer paying to appear in their answers? What about medical, financial, legal advice? OpenAI has promised that “ads do not influence responses.” That’s what he said in minute 0. But that promise will be increasingly difficult to sustain as monetization pressure increases. {“videoId”:”x9u4ml2″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Does Gemini 3 surpass ChatGPT? This is Google’s new AI”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”156″} Anthropic has its own problem: If it only reaches those who can afford to pay, AI becomes a tool of the elites. A technology that promises to democratize knowledge ends up reproducing the class divisions that already exist. We saw this coming with the arrival of $200 plans to access the AI ​​elite. A gap that creates another gap, The parallel with the history of the Internet is inevitable. Free social networks caught (almost) all of us in the 1910s, but in return they built advertising surveillance machines optimized for the engagementnot for anyone’s well-being. Payment services are cleaner, but also more exclusive. So AI is now at that bifurcation point: OpenAI is committed to being the YouTube of AI: free for everyone, supported by ads and with premium versions for those who want to pay. Anthropic wants to be the Netflix: better experience and free of ads, but only for those who pay. It is true that it maintains a free plan, but its limits are a continuous invitation to check out or leave. And now it’s up for grabs What kind of relationship with those machines that know more and more about us and from which we ask more and more?. Whether they will be services that serve us or whether they will be platforms that monetize us. In Xataka | The AI ​​of 2026 brings an uncomfortable truth: the most useful will be the one that watches us the most Featured image | Anthropic (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Anthropic has taken Apple’s strategy against Microsoft to the Super Bowl: making using the rival look ridiculous was originally published in Xataka by Javier Lacort .

Telefónica sought to dismiss 4,525 employees with its ERE. Now you have a problem called 5,124 volunteers

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Telefónica has closed the first phase of your ERE in Spain with more employees wanting to leave the company than places available in the ERE. 5,124 workers from the different subsidiaries of the operator presented themselves as candidates to benefit from the ERE. Of these volunteers to leave the company, 352 candidates have been left out because the maximum number of dismissals agreed with the unions has been exceeded. This excess of volunteers worries union representatives. Volunteers to be fired. At the end of December, the company and unions signed the conditions for the Employment Regulation File that will affect seven subsidiaries of the Telefónica group: Telefónica de España, Telefónica Móviles, Telefónica Soluciones, Telefónica Global Solutions, Telefónica Innovación Digital, Telefónica SA and Movistar+. There A minimum of 4,525 departures was set for the entire group, reducing the number of layoffs by 25.6% from the 6,088 that the company planned at the beginning. This implies a reduction of 26.2% of the 17,248 employees of those seven companies. The bulk of the layoffs he was going to concentrate on the matrix and its two main subsidiaries. That is, Telefónica España, Telefónica Móviles and Telefónica Soluciones for which a minimum of 3,765 departures and a maximum of 5,040 were marked. According to pointed Digital EconomyIn these three subsidiaries, 3,995 volunteers have been registered in Telefónica de España, 990 in Móviles and 179 in Solutions, adding up to a total of 5,124 requests to join the ERE. 84 more than the maximum limit provided for them. How many applications are accepted. Of the requests presented for these three subsidiaries, Telefónica has accepted a total of 4,772 exits, which are distributed as follows: 3,649 exits in Telefónica de España, 960 in Mobile and 163 in Solutions, reaching 100% of the objective. That leaves 352 rejected, distributed as follows: 306 in Telefónica de España, 30 in Mobile and 16 in Solutions. It is not the first time that there are more applications for membership than departure places. A similar phenomenon also occurred in the company’s previous ERE. In fact, the unions are asking that priority be given to those employees who were rejected in the previous ERE of 2024reinforcing the voluntary nature of the measure and avoiding forced dismissals. Unions are concerned about the excess. In a statementCCOO insists that the ERE is voluntary and agreed upon, but the excess of applications submitted to the company’s headquarters has them worried. The union insists on analyzing the background that has led so many employees to express their desire to leave the company. “The large number of requests also shows discontent and the need to leave Telefónica, a worrying issue because it indicates a clear dissatisfaction of the staff in the exercise of their professional development,” the union interpreted. What remains to be decided. With the three majority subsidiaries of the Related Companies Agreement already almost closed, it is time to analyze the applications from Telefónica Global Solutions, Telefónica SA, Telefónica Innovación Digital and Movistar+. For these three subsidiaries Global Solutions, Telefónica SA and Telefónica Innovación Digital, 416 volunteers have presented themselves for the 585 planned departures (109 in Global Solutions, 182 in Innovación Digital and 294 in Telefónica SA). This accession leaves these subsidiaries with coverage of 71.11% of the total, forcing the company to look for new candidates and opt for forced dismissals. Something that unions want to avoid at all costs. In other words, while in the group’s headquarters some employees want to leave and cannot, in the smaller subsidiaries they will have to fire employees who want to stay. No news from Movistar+. The Movistar+ TV platform It is the big unknown at the moment, since the numbers of applications to benefit from the ERE, which will affect 175 employees of this division, which represents 20% of its workforce, have not yet been made public. In Xataka | Severance compensation: when there is the right to collect it according to the type of dismissal and how it is calculated Image | Telephone

For experts the question is whether we are in uncharted territory

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For hours, the state of the Fresnillo dam was subject of rumors, hoaxes and concern. The reservoir, extremely close to the urban area of ​​Grazalema, was being monitored by the UME and preventive evictions had been carried out in the homes near the Gaidóvar riverbank. Finally, the mayor had to come out to deny that the rip of the dam was a scenario that was on the table. But the day was not over. 229 kilometers from there, around twelve at night, the Civil Guard began the complete eviction of Dúdara town in Granada at the foot of the Quéntar dam. The swamp It was at 101.46% of its capacity and I had to start pumping out water at full speed. A few kilometers from there, the Genil destroyed the Fabriquilla bridge and part of the old electrical installations of Hazallanas Other neighbors in the area, too They were relocated due to the rise of the river Aguas Blancas and, in Poniente Granada, hundreds of people slept in sports centers before the overflow del Genil, Colomera, Cubillas and the problems around the Frailes and Cacín rivers. In Córdoba, Navallana has been forced to unload and, as a consequence, the Guadalquivir channel receives more pressure. Back in Cádiz, the Bornos reservoir too is approaching its maximum capacity and, according to the local pressthe dam has dawned with two backhoes in case the floodgates had to be opened even more. That is to say, the lamination capacity of the Andalusian containment system is reaching its limit. The UME is taking control of entire municipalities and there are more than twenty roads blocked in several southern provinces. And the worst is not that. The worst thing is that it is going to continue raining. An overflowing community At this time, 14 rivers are under red warning today and another 31 are under orange warning. Rivers such as the Guadalete, the Genil, the Guadiaro and the Guadalhorce They are not just responding to today’s rain.but to the inability of the basin to drain what has accumulated in the last 48 hours. The best example is called Huétor Tájar (in Granada). There the Genil River – the largest tributary of the Guadalquivir – completely overflowed and the chaos has been so enormous that The army has had to take control of the entire area. Above all, because this occurred before the discharges from the headwaters of the river (still contained by the Canales reservoir) reached the area. But the key data is that of Grazalema. Although the official figures will obscure the record (because they are measured by hydrological days), the truth is that that corner of Cádiz has received more than 600 liters per square meter in 24 hours. Today, in addition, there are more than 100. And that is key because every dam (every river engineering work) is made with one key piece of information: the return to 500 years. That is, the risk of flooding at 50, 100 and 500 years. What if what is happening in Grazalema is not something specific? What if climate change is updating the chances that extreme events of this type will happen much more often? We tend to have a stereotypical view of global warming, but these are the things where it really makes a real difference: in the ability to put our infrastructures in check more criticism. In this sense, when the worst of this crisis is over, when the rain and floods give us a break, we will have to understand all this as a great stress test for our water system. And more importantly, we will have to act accordingly. Image | Dream Flower In Xataka | 180 liters where 60 were expected: why the high-resolution models have “crashed” against the Grazalema wall

The most brutal rains in the history of Andalusia have already ended. Now the real problems begin

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The storm Leonardo little by little begins to fade from the maps, leaving in its wake mainly alerts for strong gusts of wind in certain regions of Andalusia. The problem is that its footprint on the ground is just beginning to show its true dimension, since the main danger is that even if rainfall begins to decrease, the water continues to rise in the rivers. And this gives rise to the feared floods that are already has caused numerous evictions. Extreme saturation. To understand why authorities and the AEMET maintain the emergency level 2 and red warnings despite lulls in rainfall, we have to look under our feet. The soil functions, under normal conditions, like a sponge capable of retaining large volumes of water. However, after weeks of constant rainfall, Andalusia has reached its saturation point. In this way, the land does not support any more water, which increases the runoff coefficient throughout the territory. This means that each new liter that falls, no matter how small, will barely filter through the ground. The result is that it will run on the surface, turning slopes and mountains into giant slides towards the rivers. Increase of the channel. This is the reason why 14 rivers are under red notice today and another 31 under orange. Rivers such as the Guadalete, the Genil, the Guadiaro and the Guadalhorce They are not just responding to today’s rain.but to the inability of the basin to drain what has accumulated in the last 48 hours. We have an example in Huétor Tájar in Granadawhere the Genil River overflowed, making the entire town become a large lake. And this is the main risk we face despite the fact that rainfall is beginning to reduce its intensity. The reservoirs. The other major front of this crisis is hydraulic engineering. The reservoirs act as buffers during floodsretaining the water to prevent it from devastating the towns downstream. But Leonardo has managed to finish filling these reservoirs to their maximum limits. This has forced us to initiate technical releases with increasing amounts of water to avoid breakages or uncontrolled overflows of the dams. The problem is that doing so injects more flow into rivers that are already at the limit of their capacity, keeping towns like Ubrique or the lower areas of the Guadalquivir in suspense. Sierra Nevada. Gravity in the Genil basin is not based solely on precipitation, but on thermodynamics. Leonardo is not a cold storm of polar origin, but rather an Atlantic storm loaded with humidity that is causing snow accumulated in previous weeks melts at a high speed. The result here is clear: a greater flow in the rivers that drain the Sierra that joins all the factors that we have mentioned before. Landslides. For the next few hours, in addition to the increase in the riverbed, we must also keep in mind the risk of hillslide. In these cases, water saturation increases the weight of the soil and reduces its internal friction. This translates into a greater risk of landslides on roads and slopes, something that can especially occur in mountain areas such as Cádiz or Axarquía in Malaga. More rain on Saturday. Faced with overflowing soil, the last thing you want is to receive more rain. But the reality is that this same Saturday a new storm comes in that has already activated an orange alert in a region that has been greatly punished by Leonardo such as Grazalema. In this case, accumulations of up to 80 liters per square meter are again expected, which may further aggravate the situation that is being experienced. Images | Ted Balmer In Xataka | We have always believed that London is very rainy and that Barcelona is not. The only problem is that it’s a lie

the plan to turn Asturias into the great energy shipyard that Europe no longer knows how to build

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For decades, the West operated under a mirage: believing that making things was no longer relevant and that the future lay only in software. However, China has woken up Europe of that dream, showing him that national sovereignty depends, ultimately, on knowing how to melt metal. Now that “bath of reality” has just docked in Asturias. The Port of Gijón, El Musel, has ceased to be just a strategic enclave for local coal and steel to become the epicenter of a global ambition. The Asturian group Zima and the Chinese giant Dajin Offshore they have sealed an alliance to build a foundation plant for offshore wind. However, there is a problem and size does matter, a lot. The landing of a colossus. Dajin and Zima have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop a facility that will not only manufacture components, but will function as a port for marshalling —the logistics area where these pieces are collected and pre-assembled—. As detailed in The Economistthe objective is to supply the European market and alleviate bottlenecks in the sector. Dajin is not just any actor. As detailed in local media, It is the largest Chinese private manufacturer of offshore wind structures. This alliance will reinforce the strategic role of the region in the European energy transition. The Gordian knot: the crisis of space. Zima’s initial project occupied 153,753 square meters on the North Pier. However, the entry of Dajin changes everything: the multinational need more space. Making XXL “monopiles” is not like making cars. According to technical data provided by Energetica21Dajin has the capacity to manufacture structures up to 12 meters in diameter, 120 meters in length and 2,500 tons in weight. “Moving and storing these steel cylinders requires massive esplanades that are currently compromised,” warn industry sources. in LNE. El Musel finds himself facing a puzzle. The land requested by Zima borders Ionway’s future battery plant. As LNE explainsthe Port Authority is studying with “the best disposition” how to meet this demand, either by extending towards the sea or looking for non-contiguous plots. An “Electrostate” in the Cantabrian Sea. To understand this project you have to look at the global context. Today, China builds 74% of the planet’s renewable energy. By settling in Gijón, Dajin brings what the West has lost: heavy industrial capacity. As Miquel Zorita, director of Zima, points out, in The Economistthe desire is to integrate local suppliers. This is vital because European wind turbine manufacturers such as Siemens Gamesa or Vestas are going through a deep profitability crisis. Chinese technology in Asturias could be the necessary oxygen ball, even if it is under a foreign flag. The industrial clock against the bureaucratic clock. The success of this operation will not be measured only in the millions of euros of investment or in the jobs created, but in the size of the facilities it will depend exclusively on the space they obtain in the port. Asturias has before it the opportunity to stop being a “quarry” of resources and become a center of high added value. But, as Craig Tindale’s thesis warnsa civilization that sacrifices its material base ends up losing its independence. Gijón is redesigning its map; Now it remains to be seen if El Musel has enough soil to support so much weight. Image | Bafpg and ShellAsp Xataka | Inspecting an offshore wind turbine no longer requires stopping it: the drone that uses AI to ‘x-ray’ moving blades

Valve has just announced a delay and price increase for the Steam Machine

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Valve’s plans to revolutionize desktop video games face the reality of the component market. The company has confirmed the postponement of Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller, initially planned for the first quarter of 2026, due to the global shortage of RAM and storage. The announcement comes accompanied by a warning: the initially announced prices will be revised upwards, which puts at risk the strategy of competing directly with traditional consoles. What we believed. The official presentation of Valve’s hardware took place in November 2025when the company simultaneously unveiled three devices aimed at expanding its ecosystem beyond the traditional PC: the Steam Machine console, the Steam Frame virtual reality headset, and a new iteration of the Steam Controller. At that time, information provided to media It targeted a launch in the first quarter of 2026. Our love broke. However, Valve has had to recalibrate its expectations. According to the statement, the company acknowledges that it hoped to announce definitive prices and specific release dates at this point, but circumstances in the component market have prevented this. “The limited availability and rising prices of these critical components mean we must review our exact shipping schedule and pricing,” they admit. A little later. The new time frame now extends to the first half of 2026, a deliberately vague formulation that contrasts with the initial precision. Valve emphasizes that it maintains its goal of distributing the three products within that period, but warns about the volatility of the scenario: they need to establish prices and dates that they can announce with confidence, aware of how quickly circumstances can change. The RAM crisis. The problem affects the entire technology industry. Memory manufacturers have experienced a unprecedented price increase: according to data from the component market, the cost of RAM modules has multiplied by three or even four from the beginning of 2026. This escalation responds to a strategic reorientation of the major producers such as SamsungSK Hynix and Micron, which prioritize the manufacture of high-performance memory for artificial intelligence servers, a segment that offers higher profit margins. It was seen coming. Already in November, when Valve presented its hardware, the warning signs were evident. By then, the company recognized that setting prices was complex because “the market is a little strange” and “memory prices are going up as we speak.” What seemed like temporary turbulence has been consolidated as a structural trend. It is a crisis that evokes the semiconductor shortage that shook the industry between 2020 and 2022, causing delays in the launch of consoles and widespread price increases in graphics cards. The current phenomenon presents, however, a peculiarity: it is not about interruptions in the supply chain, but rather a deliberate decision by manufacturers to redirect productive capacity towards the lucrative AI market, leaving the gaming industry in the background. What is known about the machine’s hardware. The Steam Machine, the star product of this trilogy, will be powered by an AMD processor, as confirmed by the semiconductor company’s CEO, Lisa Su, during the presentation of quarterly results: “From a product perspective, Valve is on track to begin shipping its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year.” That statement, which sounded reassuring then, now takes on an ironic tone: the hardware is ready, but the economic context is not. During previous sessions with specialized media, the company indicated that the Steam Machine would be placed “close to the entry level of the PC space”, a formulation that suggested that it would compete directly with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in terms of price, rather than with high-end PC configurations. This approach clashes head-on with the current reality of the components market: competing with consoles means achieving very tight margins in a closed ecosystem where Sony and Microsoft can assume initial losses. Valve lacks that flexibility, and the increase in memory and storage costs threatens to place its products in a price range that would distance them from the average consumer. In Xataka | Panic of a ridiculous death among RAM manufacturers: they fear that technology companies will “monopolize” and they are already putting controls

how to check their status and the dangers of river overflows with infoAGUA

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Let’s tell you how to look at the state of the reservoirs and the dangers of river overflows. For this we are going to use infoAGUA, an application promoted by the General Directorate of Water and with official data from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation and the Ministry for Ecological Transformation and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO). With this application we will have all the information related to water in Spain in a unified and centralized way. It’s like an alternative to Google flood risk mapbut with the official information. You can download the application for free on Google Play for Android and in the App Store for your iPhone. Look at the level of reservoirs and flood zones When you open the app, you will go to a simple screen with few options. Here, To see the information on the reservoirs, click on Quantity of Water Resourceswhich will take you to a screen where you have the option Cartographic Viewer to view information on a map. This will take you to a screen where you can see the general level of reservation capacity of each hydrographic district. This will allow you to see at a glance the regions where the most water is being stored. But you can zoom in to get more information. If you zoom in you will begin to see all the reservoirs in the areas you have approached. If you click on one of them you will be able to see at what level is this reservoir that you have chosen. You will be able to do this in as many as you want. Also you will have rain gauge information to know how much it is raining in specific areas. In Xataka How to know if you live in a flood zone with this map On the main screen you also have the section of Flood risk. This will show you in red the Areas with Significant Potential Risk of Flooding (ARPSI), and in shades of blue the flood zones in general. On this map you will also be able to zoom in and explore specific areas. In addition, if you click on these areas you will also be able to see the level of water rise that may exist in this place. In Xataka Basics | Google flood risk map: so you can see if you live in an area that is at risk

China surrounded an enclave with robots. Now they have been given a rifle to shoot at 100 meters, and the result points to an island

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China has been leaving increasingly explicit clues about how it imagines future conflicts. In 2025, PLA maneuvers included island assault exercises minors using ground robots and unmanned systems, a sign that Beijing is no longer testing only classic amphibious crossings, but scenarios where machines make way before soldiers. Those practices marked a clear direction: Combat automation was no longer a distant theory, but something China was beginning to test on the ground. Now he has amplified it. Drones with rifle. China has made a qualitative leap in the use of combat drones by demonstrating that a UAV armed with a standard assault rifle can be 100% right of his shots against a human target at 100 meters while remaining in hover. The system, developed by a Chinese company together with the PLA special operations academy, fired 20 times and placed half of the hits in a comparable radius. a shot to the heada result that makes it clear that these are no longer experimental platforms but rather precision weapons ready for real environments. Extra ball. It does not seem like a specific experiment or a laboratory demonstration: the team itself has explained that the only “imperfect” shot was due defective ammunitionnot the system, making this test an unmistakable sign of where Chinese combat power is headed. Taiwan and a problem. This progress cannot be understood without the Taiwan backdropone of the most urbanized territories on the planet, where any military operation would require fighting in dense megacities, full of civilians, underground infrastructure and narrow streets that neutralize many traditional advantages. For the PLA, the challenge is not just cross the seabut to dominate neighborhoods, subway stations and residential complexes where human infantry suffer enormous political and military costs. The Chinese response to this dilemma is neither doctrinal nor moral, but technical: dealing with urban warfare as an engineering problem which can be solved by delegating violence to machines capable of moving, identifying targets and shooting without fatigue or fear. A bet. In fact, recalled in The Diplomat that the essay of the armed drone fits into the third major phase of Chinese military modernization, the so-called “intelligentization,” which seeks to replace human decisions with distributed artificial intelligence systems. Having mechanized and digitized its forces, the PLA now aims to delegate key functions (detection, prioritization and attack) to algorithms that operate faster than any human chain of command. In this framework, a drone with a rifle is not a curiosity, but rather an elemental piece of an ecosystem where sensors, weapons and software act in a coordinated manner, reducing the role of the soldier. to a mere initial authorizer or, in the extreme, eliminating him from decision-making altogether. Swarms in alleys. There is much more, because the medium stood out documents and studies linked to Chinese military universities that reveal that the target is not individual drones, but autonomous swarms specifically designed for urban warfare. These systems are designed to operate at low altitudes, inside buildings, indoors and underground, even when communications are degraded or non-existent. Through simple rules and self-organization, swarms They could patrol areastrack people and execute attacks without receiving orders in real time, a solution that the PLA consider ideal to neutralize defenses in cities such as Taipei or Kaohsiung and to eliminate key objectives before external forces can intervene. The gray area of ​​legality. The technological bet is accompanied by a legal position deliberately ambiguous by Beijing on lethal autonomous weapons. As? Defining as unacceptable Only those systems that simultaneously meet a series of very strict criteria, China leaves itself a wide margin to develop weapons capable of killing without direct human supervision, as long as they can be stopped in theory or follow pre-programmed rules. This ambiguity, they say, contrasts with documented risks of AI in combat (identification errors, inability to interpret human intentions, data biases) and makes it easier for research to advance without clear regulatory brakes. The future that is being tested today. In short, the drone that shoot with surgical precision at 100 meters is not an anecdote, but tangible proof of where the Beijing strategy: move the war to the heart of the city and delegate it to machines. There is no doubt that if this model is applied in a conflict such as Taiwan, the combination of autonomous swarms, integrated light weapons and decisions without human intervention could multiply the risk for civilians and reduce the political thresholds for the use of force. From that prism, what is presented today as a technical experiment is, in reality, a most disturbing preview: that of an urban war where the alleys are no longer patrolled by soldiers, but by armed robots that will never ask questions. Image | Heeheemalu In Xataka | The biggest geopolitical risk on the planet is not Greenland. It’s a smaller island with a disturbing neighbor: Taiwan In Xataka | 200 drones in the hands of a single soldier: China is advancing very quickly in a type of war that seemed like science fiction

This is the new pCloud promo for Valentine’s Day

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There are few things as tiring as having to delete photos, videos and files from our devices due to lack of capacity. To avoid this, we can choose cloud storage serviceswhere There is life beyond Google Drive. If you are looking to have lifetime cloud storage To not worry about uploads or quotas, keep an eye on this pCloud offer for Valentine’s Day: we can get 1 TB forever for 199 euros. Lifetime cloud storage (1TB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Secure and easy-to-use cloud storage This service, which generally has a price of 435 euros, allows us to do a single payment and forget about installments forever. In exchange, we would have 1 TB of storage in a cloud that we will talk about below. If this amount of space seems small to you, the lifetime plan of 2 TB per month is also available at a discount. 279 euros (its RRP is 599 euros) and the 10 TB per 799 euros (with the greatest discount, since its price is 1,890 euros). Choosing a lifetime cloud storage plan has other advantages. In addition to the fact that you only have to pay once, you must also take into account that In the long run it will save us. Obviously, that also makes us “immune” to price increases in the service, which is always positive. pCloud is a company of Swiss origin that offers a very secure cloud service with an encryption that prevents possible access by third parties to our information. It is a very interesting alternative if we want to use a European service and we want flee US-based servicesas is the case with Google Drive. The service has a dedicated application for both computers (regardless of whether they use MacOS, Windows or Linux) and mobile phones. This will allow us to access our files from wherever we want, also adding to the formula the possibility of configuring a automatic backup for photos and videos. Along with all of the above, we must take into account that the service allows recover deleted data up to 30 days ago. It also makes it very easy to share folder links and files with a password, in addition to even having an integrated media player so we can play the stored content directly. With this Valentine’s Day promo, we practically have a 50% off pCloud lifetime planslet’s choose which one we choose. In this way and with a single payment, we will have plenty of space for our files forever and without having to pay monthly payments or possible price increases. Lifetime cloud storage (1TB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links 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 | pCloud In Xataka | What is the best laptop for working in 2025. Tips and recommendations In Xataka | The best digital photo frames of 2025 Which one to buy? Tips and recommendations

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