access

“Lol, I have access”, the message from the engineer who uncovered the scandal

by

This weekend a soap opera has exploded that seriously threatens the first Made in OpenAI hardware, leaving an engineer with a long and successful career as an engineer in a bad light. Tan Tang (24 years at Apple and VP of product design for the iPhone or Apple Watch) and calls into question the security of Cupertino: Apple has led to court OpenAI for alleged theft of hardware trade secrets and breach of contract. what’s happening. Apple sums it up harshly in demand40 pages: “one thing is clear: at every level, from members of its technical staff to its director of hardware, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing trade secrets and confidential information from Apple.” Additionally, Apple alleges that former employees, specifically Chang Liu and Tang Tan, continued to access confidential Apple information after moving to OpenAI. Two former Apple employees, in the target. Striking is the case of Liu, a senior electrical systems engineer who, after eight years at Apple, left for OpenAI in January 2026. Apparently, Chang Liu kept his corporate laptop and discovered a flaw that allowed him to access Apple’s internal servers and download a collection of more than a thousand pages of technical files on unannounced technologies, features and products, including technical specifications and engineering presentations. “LOL, I discovered that I have access to the storage network, how fun”, wrote in an email to a former Apple colleague. For his part, Tang Tan, OpenAI’s current hardware director, is accused of using confidential Apple codenames during OpenAI’s hiring process, asking candidates to bring Apple hardware components to their interviews, and advising those abandoning Apple’s ship on how to evade the company’s security procedures. Why is it important. For OpenAI this is a blow that goes straight to its waterline, as it prepares to go public and launch its first device with AI. Sam Altman’s company will have to do and prove much more than the brief statements of its spokesperson, Drew Pusateri: “We are not interested in the trade secrets of other companies. We remain focused on developing innovative technology that empowers people around the world,” as reported by CNBC. For Apple, this lawsuit is an attempt to stop the incessant drain of talent that Cupertino has been suffering for a long year and that it has a fairly common destiny: OpenAI. Apple figures the disbandment of workers in 400 peoplewho would have abandoned the Cupertino ship bound for the company led by Altman. OpenAI has gone from being the company behind the most mainstream artificial intelligence models to becoming a potential direct competitor in hardware with its future first AI gadget. Context. Veteran Tang Tan had spent almost half his life at Apple and it is not an exaggeration: he spent 24 years there, where he became vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, with an essential role in their supervision. Then, he left and together with another Apple legend like Jony Ive, he founded io Products in 2024. In 2025, OpenAI bought io Products for 6.5 billion dollars in 2025. This is not the first time that OpenAI has found itself in court, which in fact has a few on intellectual property. The most popular is the one that has been pending with The New York Times since 2023, when the American media sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using their articles without permission to train AI models. In detail. In the lawsuit filed it is stated that Apple sent a letter in February to OpenAI to express his concerns, but received no response. Regarding its legal requests, Apple asks the court to prohibit OpenAI from retaining, exploiting or distributing its trade secrets and to force the return of all intellectual property allegedly stolen. As striking as the names and actions of the two former Apple employees are the absences: despite his leading role in the plot, Jony Ive is not accused of anything. What’s going to happen now. Now the trial enters a phase where Apple and OpenAI will have to share evidence, emails and internal documents between them, before a judge decides the case. Meanwhile, Apple is asking for precautionary measures to prevent OpenAI from continuing to use the information, as well as compensation and the return of all the allegedly stolen material. This request from Apple is critical because it could paralyze and even stop the launch of its AI device to redesign components or modify technical specifications or manufacturing processes if it is proven that they are based on Apple’s intellectual property. In Xataka | Apple and OpenAI repeat the bet that sank Humane and Rabbit: screenless wearables in a world addicted to TikTok In Xataka | OpenAI working on its own AI device: although the leaks are not clarified, this is all we know to date

The US taught that access to advanced AI can be cut off. China is studying the same thing, according to Reuters, and Europe is watching from the outside

by

When the United States activated export controls which ended up leading Anthropic to deactivate Fables 5 and Mythos 5 For all its users, a reality that was difficult to ignore was exposed: access to advanced AI may be cut off. Not because the model disappears, nor because it stops working technically, but because a national security decision can convert an available tool into a conditioned capability. Things have changed slightly since then: controls on Fable lifted after new safeguards and Mythos was limited to a few trusted American organizations, but the precedent is still there. Now that question returns from the other side of the board. Reuters reports that Chinese authorities have held meetings over the last month with the country’s major technology companies to study possible restrictions on foreign access to their most advanced AI models, including some that have not yet been launched. Alibaba, ByteDance and Z.ai participated in those meetings, according to three people familiar with the conversations. At the moment there is no approved measure, no fixed calendar, nor definitive scope. Perhaps more revealing, Beijing is discussing how far it wants to open up its most advanced AI products. What was discussed in those meetings goes beyond closing an API or limiting access to a specific product. According to the agency, participants talked about putting limits on the most advanced models, both closed and more open versions, and also about toughening the consequences for what they call leaks or thefts of proprietary AI technology. One of the sources consulted indicated that these leaks could be treated as crimes linked to China’s strict national security law. New restrictions were also raised on who can fund domestic AI startups. Advanced AI enters the logic of strategic control There are several reasons why what was mentioned does not remain solely within Chinese borders. Since the emergence of DeepSeek R1, remember, AI developed in China has gained ground outside the country thanks to a very attractive combination for many companies: low costs and increasing capabilities. Alibaba has Qwen, ByteDance features Doubao and Z.ai has attracted attention in Silicon Valley with GLM-5.2a model that comes close to leading American offerings at a fraction of the cost. If Beijing limits that access, many businesses and users could find themselves with fewer options and, presumably, higher bills. The Chinese AI sector also seems interested in developing cybersecurity-oriented systems equivalent or superior to those in the United States. Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360, a cybersecurity company with weight among government and enterprise clients, has said that China needs to develop its own Mythos. The company came to present Tulongfeng as a Chinese response to that type of system, stating that it is capable of detecting a large number of vulnerabilities. This is where the most delicate part of the debate appears when viewed from Europe. When the Anthropic case brought to the table the possibility that access to American models would be conditioned by Washington, some raised the Chinese models as a possible alternative: cheaper, increasingly capable and, in certain cases, available through API or with open weights. The new information from Reuters introduces an important nuance in that reading. Changing suppliers can reduce costs or open up new technical options, but does not eliminate the dependency if the critical capacity continues to live under a foreign jurisdiction. Europe, moreover, had already been thinking about this kind of risk before Anthropic and China occupied the center of the discussion. The Commission has defended the need to reduce dependencies on cloud, artificial intelligence and semiconductors, and has linked that agenda with the autonomy and digital resilience of the continent. In that discussion, Brussels has come to warn of the risk of “kill switches”: the possibility that a foreign supplier or a government with the ability to pressure can interrupt essential technological services. That is why Europe looks from the outside. The United States preserves some of the most advanced models in the world and has already made it clear that access to them may be conditioned by a political or national security decision. China, for its part, has gained ground with cheaper and increasingly capable modelsand now I would be studying my own restrictions. The Old Continent is in another place: it has regulation, sovereign ambition and promising companies, but it does not yet seem to have an equivalent in commercial weight, global adoption and strategic capacity to the products that today set the technological bar. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana | Arthur Wang In Xataka | Alibaba’s Qwen AI model is the new crown jewel. The only problem is that they don’t make money from it.

Google has had to ration access to Gemini to Meta and more customers

by

That computing power is one of the bottlenecks of the AI ​​industry is obvious. From this problem arises the insane investment in data centers and, consequently, the DRAM memory crisis. It is one thing if they are OpenAI or Anthropic those with capacity problemsthe serious thing is when the one who has them is Google. This is exactly what is happening and the main victim is Meta. Google turns off the tap. They tell it in Financial Times. Google has had to limit the use of Gemini due to the enormous demand from its clients, especially one in particular: Meta. Zuckerberg’s people had requested to buy more processing capacity from them, but Google could not satisfy it, so it had to reject the request. This has caused several projects within Meta to be delayed and the company to ask employees to begin relaxing the use of tokens. Why it is important. Google is not just any tech company, it is a hyperscaler. It has an infrastructure that allows it to offer cloud services to thousands of customers on a massive scale. That the shortage is affecting them to the point of limiting a large customer like Meta reveals that even spending hundreds of billions in chips, data centers and energy, is not being enough to meet the demand for AI. Meta dependency. Although also They are developing their own AI modelssources consulted by the Financial Times affirm that Gemini offered better performance than the Llama de Meta models. The company was using Gemini for moderation tasks such as fraud detection and sensitive content, as well as customer service, advertising support chatbots, and scheduling tasks. Zuckerberg’s company also is spending a fortune in AI infrastructure to become more independent, including building a data center as big as the island of Manhattan. However, they do not have a cloud business like Google has with Google Cloud, Amazon with AWS or Microsoft with Azure. The business is in the cloud. Doubts about the profitability of AI continue to hover over the environment, but in the meantime there is a business that has proven to be the real goose that lays the golden eggs: the cloud. While OpenAI loses money a lotGoogle, Microsoft and Amazon are the winners of the AI ​​boom. Google posted record revenue in the first quarter of the year, with Google Cloud bringing in a whopping $20 billion, up 63% from last year. Sundar Pichai already warned that the figure would have been much higher if it were not for the fact that they are limited by the calculation. In fact, this same month we learned the news that Google will pay $920 million a month to SpaceX to lend it its infrastructure. In other words: the data center party is not going to stop and, as a result, neither will the RAM crisis. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Google is the big technology company that is doing the best thanks to AI: so it is going to spend another million

a direct access to the highway

by

The Ministry of Transport has tendered the contract to design a new connection between the AP-68 and the N-232 in Aldeanueva del Ebro, in La Rioja Baja. The link is something that the area has been demanding for years and is expected to arrive precisely after the liberalization of the Basque-Aragonese toll, scheduled for the end of the year. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Claim. The region of La Rioja Baja had long complained of being poorly connected to the AP-68. The section between the Corella/Alfaro and Calahorra links It is 27.6 kilometers without any intermediate exita distance that forces many drivers and transporters to make unnecessary detours through the secondary network. The idea is that the new link, planned at kilometer 186.2 of the highway, covers that gap. What exactly has been tendered. What the ministry has put out to competition It is not the construction of the link, but the contract to write the project. The amount of this tender amounts to 718,908.44 euros (VAT included) and the execution period is 24 months. According to official planning, design work would begin in March 2027 and conclude in February 2029. The physical works on the land, therefore, would not arrive before mid-2029. The estimated budget for construction is around 11.2 million euros. How would the connection be? The new link would join kilometer 186.2 of the AP-68 with the N-232, around kilometer 351.6 of this road, through the regional highway LR-384, which passes through the municipality of Aldeanueva del Ebro. In this way, the connection would significantly shorten journeys in the Rioja corridor area. lAP-68 will no longer collect tolls. The AP-68 concession is about to expire and the highway will become free of charge, expected at the end of this year (less in the Álava area). This implies a significant increase in traffic, and the ministry is taking advantage of the lead-up to this liberalization to reinforce access to the road. Along the same lines there is also the Fuenmayor linkalready partially in service, which connects the future A-68 highway with the A-12, the LO-20, the N-120 and the N-232, and which has involved an investment of 36 million euros. The Secretary of State for Transport, José Antonio Santano, counted during its commissioning that the action “leaves the connections of all the roads close to the AP-68 ready, once the toll is released.” Of the 13 branches of the Fuenmayor link, 8 are already operational; The remaining 5 will not be able to be enabled until the highway is free of tolls. And also in Calahorra. The ministry confirms that, in parallel, it is drafting a project to improve the functionality of the existing link between the AP-68 and the N-232 in Calahorra. Three actions (Fuenmayor, Calahorra and Aldeanueva) that draw a roadmap to modernize the connections of the entire Rioja corridor before and after the AP-68 opens its barriers definitively. What’s left. The project tender is a first step, but the deadlines are long. That the design will not be ready until 2029 means that the works are still far away. Now the region will have to wait for that 27-kilometer gap without access to become a bigger problem than it already is, especially when the toll is freed and there is more traffic circulating on the AP-68. Cover image | Wikipedia In Xataka | Smart traffic lights are one step closer to being a reality in Spain: this is what changes and what does not

$200 a month gives access to $14,000 in tokens

by

Most of those who pay to use AI models do so with subscriptions. They take advantage of platforms like ChatGPT Plus either Claude Pro and with them they access an all-you-can-eat buffet that at first seems quite generous. Those who are in this modality surely have divided opinions: some will say that they immediately cross the limits and others that they almost never cross them. They are both right. Bargain subscriptions. The prestigious SemiAnalysis has carried out an investigation most curious. They signed up for Anthropic and OpenAI subscription plans and then tried to get the most out of them. The question they wanted to answer was simple: are they really profitable, or is it better to pay per use with the API? His conclusion is forceful: these subscriptions are an absolute bargain… if used well. You pay 200 dollars in tokens, they give you 14,000. SemiAnalysis research took advantage of these subscription plans to execute complex programming tasks that also extended over time to exhaust the weekly usage limits of each account. Popular belief is that these plans have a consumption limit of about $2,000 (costing $200). However, their tests showed that Anthropic’s plan allowed them to consume $8,000 per month in API tokens. In the case of OpenAI, things were even better: they managed to consume the equivalent of $14,000 worth of tokens per month. The savings are simply amazing and make one thing clear: if you make the most of your subscription, it is almost a free gift. The all-you-can-eat buffet trap. The figures make it clear that OpenAI and Anthropic are using the same model of business than that of gyms or free food buffets: users who do not go or eat little finance those who do not stop going and put on their boots. The technology companies are taking huge losses with the power users of AI that do not stop using these plans with autonomous agents that squeeze them. Risk. But that group is balanced by many subscribers who pay the flat rate but only ask a handful of fairly simple questions each day. According to analyst Ed Zitron, that’s dangerous: it is enough for 25% of users to decide to squeeze those usage rates for the profit margins of these companies to be negative. Price drop in sight. Coinciding with the study, in The Wall Street Journal they indicated this week how OpenAI is considering entering a price war by lowering the prices of its subscriptions. It could thus anticipate Anthropic—which could do the same—but for experts that could end badly. Gary Marcus explained that OpenAI is already surviving by creating hypeand a decision like that could go very badly for them. The Ghost of DeepSeek. This hypothetical price war could also be motivated by the costs of Chinese models such as DeepSeek, which offers much of the capacity of GPT or Claude, but at a much lower cost. Opposite that, of course, are the APIs that allow payment per use and that both Anthropic and OpenAI are increasingly forcing. These APIs impose a surcharge of between 40x and 70x the price of the subscription tokens according to some experts. Agents against subscription plans. What is threatening the future of these subscription plans are AI agents that are capable of completing complex tasks autonomously and in long sessions. These agents “burn” millions of tokens quickly, which is why both OpenAI and Anthropic limit (or ban) the use of their subscriptions to use them for example in OpenClaw. Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit, believe that the subscription tap will soon be closed in the face of these costs triggered by agentic AI. “Intelligence” keeps getting cheaper. But in the face of all those realities that seem to threaten the end of AI subscriptions, there is a factor that can contribute to their survival. As they point out in SemiAnalysisthe market laws themselves are confirming that generating tokens is increasingly cheaper. Efficiency improves and the costs of producing tokens decrease, and they could do so at such a pace that in the end access to AI remains profitable for these free buffets. Companies are subsidizing AI for us. All this leads to think that in many cases AI companies are subsidizing the use of their models. They do it by taking advantage of that scheme that only a few really take advantage of the subscription plans. The question is, of course, whether this situation has an expiration date. In Xataka | Anthropic is at the most important moment in its history and has a warning: we must lift the AI ​​accelerator

Alcasec managed to access hundreds of thousands of banking details in Spain: now it has accepted prison

by

There are cybersecurity cases that seem distant until they force us to look inward. We are not talking about a large foreign technology company or a gap lost in some remote corner of the Internet, but rather about banking data of citizens in Spain, access linked to public infrastructure and a chain that, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, ended with hundreds of thousands of records entered into a portal for sale. What we have seen with Alcasec It matters not only because of the name itself, but because of what it reveals: personal information has become a very valuable commodity. The agreement. This part of the case has been settled in the National Court with an agreement between the accused and the Prosecutor’s Office. According to EFEJosé Luis Huertas, alias Alcasec, has accepted a sentence of two years and seven months in prison for the crimes of illegal access to computer systems and discovery and disclosure of secrets. The Prosecutor’s Office initially requested three years, but applied the mitigating circumstance of confession. Along with him, Daniel BE and Juan Carlos OG, thus identified in the judicial information, have also accepted a sentence: two years and two months for the first as a cooperator and one year and three months for the second for discovery of secrets. The access. The indictment describes an entry built in layers, not a simple stroke of luck. On October 19, 2021, Alcasec contracted two massive data storage systems with Cherry Servers, a company based in Lithuania, using an email account created when he was a minor to hide his identity. Later, Daniel BE, whom the Prosecutor’s Office links to Russian forums specialized in the unauthorized sale of passwords, provided him with a stolen digital certificate issued to the General Directorate of Traffic. With that certificate, always according to the accusation, he managed to navigate the SARA network, connect to the CGPJ Judicial Neutral Point website and obtain the credentials of an official from a Bilbao court. The impersonation. The next step, always according to the Prosecutor’s Office, was to convert that first access into a way to obtain more credentials. Alcasec and Daniel BE created a page that pretended to be the access website to the Judicial Neutral Point, and the former sent a text chain to different courts that redirected to that false page. Two officials mistakenly entered their passwords, which allowed the scope of the attack to expand. The mechanics are important because they show that the intrusion did not depend only on a technical vulnerability, but also on deception of real users. The scale. With these credentials, according to the indictment, Alcasec made 438,099 requests to the Tax Agency’s “extended bank accounts” web service and shortly after carried out a second attack. The data is not minor: we are not talking about an isolated query, but rather a massive volume of queries to sensitive information through a system connected to the Administration. For the sale of data, some of relevant people, the portal was available. The reduction. The accepted sentence does not come out of nowhere, but from an agreement in accordance with the Prosecutor’s Office. As we noted above, the initial request was for three years in prison, but it was reduced to two years and seven months when the mitigating circumstance of confession for the recognized crimes was applied. The prosecutor also valued the collaboration of the accused during the investigation, particularly in providing their codes and passwords. In addition, they accepted the confiscation of the effects and the physical and virtual money seized in the searches carried out in Madrid, Cartagena and Dos Hermanas. Another investigation. There is an important nuance to not mix planes. Alcasec has been in provisional prison for a year for a different reason, related to a network of cyberattacks that seized sensitive and private data of millions of citizens and that he allegedly led. In that investigation he was arrested along with former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez, currently on trial for Operation Kitchen. The reading. What this case leaves behind is not only an accepted conviction, but a fairly clear photograph of where part of cybercrime has moved. We are no longer just talking about entering a system, but about chaining access, taking advantage of real credentials, consulting sensitive services and preparing information for sale. Images | Capture YouTube In Xataka | We have spoken with one of the leading cybersecurity companies in Spain. And his diagnosis is not encouraging

how to access your Wrapped with your listening statistics from the day you registered

by

Let’s tell you what is the new experience Your Years in Party Mode from Spotify, a kind of Wrapped with a summary of your main data since you registered on the platform. This is a special experience created by the streaming service to celebrate its twenty years of existence. Actually, this experience is quite simple, and it only shows you a few pieces of data, much less than what you can obtain with third-party services with which to collect your Spotify statistics. However, it still shows you some curious things like the first song you listened to or your most listened to artist. Therefore, we are going to tell you how can you launch this experience and what are the statistics that you will be able to see with it. In addition, you will also have a special playlist and several slides to share in stories of social networks. How to see your Wrapped with data since you signed up for Spotify To launch the experience of Your Years in Party Mode from Spotify, you have to enter the website spotify.com/20 in the browser of your mobile or your computer. If you do it on your mobile, you can directly open the Spotify app from within, and from your computer you will have a QR to scan with your mobile. Once you start the experience, you will have a kind of long history where your data is displayed. There are not several slides that you can navigate, but a single one where everything is shown little by little, but with buttons that allow you to interact with it. The first thing you will see is the exact date you registered on Spotify with your account. That was your first day. Below you can click on Next giftwhich is a poor translation of the follow to next data button that you will see on each screen. Then you will go to another screen where you are told the total number of songs you have listened to on Spotify from the day you registered. This is a good first piece of information to share and compare with your friends. Then you’ll be able to guess which one it was. the first song you heard between four options, game after which you will be shown the topic that was. And when you do this, then you will be taught What is the artist you have listened to the most? from the day you registered with Spotify, also indicating the number of minutes you have spent listening to it. Then comes one of the most interesting parts, and that is that Spotify gives you a playlist with your most listened to songs ever. Come on, the topics you’ve been listening to the most since the day you registered. When this screen appears, tap Save to library to save the playlist and listen to it whenever you want. Finally, you will go to a screen where 5 slides are shown to choose from, and in each of them you have a button to share it on social networks. You can share slides with your registration date, total songs listened to, most listened to song, your top artist and another with all this data together. In Xataka Basics | Spotify listening statistics: what they are and how to access them to know which artists you have listened to the most each week

Europe has been depending on Amazon, Google and Microsoft for its most critical data for years. You are about to cut off their access

by

The European Commission is taking action. This organization is expected to present its “Technological Sovereignty Package” on May 27. This directive will include a series of measures aimed at boosting the EU’s strategic autonomy in sensitive areas, and that means something unique: stopping depending as much as possible on US hyperscalers to store critical data. The fear of the off button. The measures are being applied due to growing political instability and some recent cases that have demonstrated the power that the US has over the European technological infrastructure. In May Microsoft “cancelled” the email of Karim Khan, a prosecutor who had been directly cited in an executive order from Donald Trump. Microsoft he denied itbut the damage had already been done, and these problems have raised fears that Trump could use a kind of “off button” against European institutions that depend on the hardware and software infrastructure provided by companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon. Legal espionage. The CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) is a 2018 US law that allows law enforcement to force US-based technology companies (such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon) to provide data, regardless of where it is stored, whether inside or outside the United States. This law updates the Stored Communications Act to prioritize data control over its location. Or what is the same: if you use the services of US hyperscalers, the US may end up accessing your data. And since you’ve accepted their terms of use, you agree to let them legally spy on you if they “need to.” If you want my critical data, you’ll have to protect it. The new regulations require service providers who want to work with critical European data to demonstrate that they are not subject to requests from non-EU governments. This automatically excludes Microsoft, Google or Amazon, because all three are subject to the CLOUD Act. Europe is thus looking for providers that guarantee that critical data will not be in the possession of companies that then have to transfer it to foreign powers. Europe depends on the American cloud. The reality is that today Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (Google Cloud) currently control more than 70% of the Cloud Computing market in the old continent. Losing these institutional contracts would mean a significant financial blow, but it also sends a powerful signal to European private companies: if Brussels does not trust the US with its secrets, why should European corporations? The domino effect could be huge. Europe has its own clouds. This directive would give an important opportunity to initiatives that seemed stalled like GAIA-Xbut there are also companies with their own infrastructure such as OVH (France) or T-Systems (Germany). There are significant technical challenges in that area, because US hyperscalers have been refining their offering over the past two decades. However, Brussels seems willing to accept a somewhat less efficient or complete service in exchange for greater autonomy. The options existno doubt, but the challenge is enormous. Migrating is going to be expensive. It is one thing to make the decision and quite another to complete that migration that will require moving decades of data and systems to a different infrastructure. Current data centers would have to be expanded to meet demand, they say some analysisand that would mean a cost of between 14,000 and 24,000 million euros. Consulting companies like Forrester they don’t see anything clear that the EU can achieve cloud sovereignty, and other experts also make it clear that Europe will not abandon the hyperscalers. Traceability. In addition to changing suppliers, the board also wants to impose strict requirements regarding transparency. AI systems that have access to that data must be auditable by the newly created EU AI Office. The Commission wants to know who has access to the code, who maintains the servers and who has the technical capacity to manage and even intercept such data transfers. Data too sensitive. In comments to CNBCEU officials explained that there are active debates demanding that financial, judicial or health data used at the government level and in the public sector have a sovereign cloud infrastructure. That’s also true for military data, of course, and There are already movements in that direction. Fragmented Internet. The move confirms that the world appears to be heading toward a future with a fragmented internet and one that will have important geopolitical boundaries. While the US tries to defend its technology against China, Europe and the entire world are trying to avoid or at least mitigate their excessive dependence on American technological solutions. Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and François Genon In Xataka | Europe no longer trusts Google. That is why several start-ups are designing an independent payment system on Android

Mythos has struck fear into governments around the world. That’s why Spain wants “early access” to see what happens

by

Spain wants to have access to Claude Mythos Preview, the AI ​​model it is making shake the world. The vice president and Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, has made clear that the European Union needs “early access” to Mythos to be able to assess what vulnerabilities European financial systems have. For the minister, “Europe cannot be a second-class region.” Bad news: today, at least for the most powerful AI startups on the planet, it is. There is not only fear in the banking sector. Although the alarm was initially raised by the financial sector, the Spanish Government warns that Mythos’ ability to find “back doors” affects practically all economic sectors. We are talking about threats that extend to critical infrastructure and essential elements for the functioning of any modern country. Anthropic itself has already made its fears clear: they did not want to launch the model publicly to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. The AI ​​Act is a problem. The European AI Law was widely celebrated among Eurolegislators for being the world’s first major regulation about this technology. In reality, it has become clear that it has been a shot in the foot for EU countries, which have often seen how the most advanced AI models could not be used on our borders because they could violate this regulation or others. like DMA/DSA. This regulation forces companies to comply with strict requirements if they want to deploy especially advanced models, considered “high risk.” And Mythos is just that, so the AI ​​Act is precisely what would prevent it from being used in Europe. So they want to delay its application. Euroofficials have realized their mistake, and are now trying to buy time because technology moves (much) faster than bureaucracy. Their proposal is simple: delay until December 2027 the application of these obligations for “high risk” models like Mythos. In this way, this model could operate in Europe without having to go through these strict controls for another year and a half. Milestone or marketing maneuver? While the Eurogroup and the ECB analyze the risks with those responsible for financial supervision, in El Mundo quote to a group of critical voices who suggest that Anthropic’s maneuver could be a distraction strategy. The thesis is simple: the company has a clear computing capacity problem, and is not able to satisfy demand. Their solution: argue that Mythos is too powerful to avoid having to release it publicly, which would cause an avalanche of petitions. Coordination. Body added that in this case it is important that the request for “early access” is coordinated and comes from the EU as a block: “We Member States cannot each go on our own in an uncoordinated manner to try to access this software to this model. We need the umbrella of the Commission and a coordinated approach.” AI as a geopolitical weapon. What this has shown is that little by little access to advanced AI models is becoming a geopolitical weapon that is straining relations between Washington and Brussels. Anthropic is expanding access to Mythos to some institutions for example in the United Kingdoma traditional ally of the US. However, trade relations with Europe they are still complicatedespecially after the tariffs with which the Trump administration wanted to change the rules of the game. In Xataka | The bad news is that the EU loses out in the tariff pact with the US. The good thing is that Spain comes out relatively unscathed

The world wants to verify the age of children so that they do not access social networks. Children’s solution: paint a mustache

by

The United Kingdom presume to have one of the strictest legislations in the world when it comes to protecting minors from social networks. The curious thing is that young people are managing to demonstrate that age verification technology has a unique Achilles heel: an eyebrow pencil. Look, I have a mustache. The British country has been forcing platforms to implement age verification measures in accordance with its Online Safety Act for months. However, a recent study from the NGO Internet Matters reveals that the limits imposed by these platforms are surprisingly easy to overcome. In fact, one of the methods is especially striking, because some children simply use an eyebrow pencil to paint a mustache and thus look older than they really are. Children 1 – Machines 0. This agency surveyed 1,000 children and parents in the United Kingdom and although it showed positive effects after activating these measures, it also made it clear that many children saw these systems as an easy obstacle to overcome rather than as a way to keep them safe. 46% of minors believe that the measures are easy to overcome. Only 17% believe that they are very difficult to avoid, while 19% say they do not know. Source: Internet Matters. Cheating machines is trivial. 46% of the children surveyed indicated that These age verification systems are easy to overcomeand only 17% found them difficult to avoid. There are several methods to overcome these systems, but most are simple. For example, using video game characters like ‘Death Stranding’ to show them in front of cameras trying to verify their age. Also show IDs of other people when asked, or simply use false birth dates. (At least) One in three skips the controls. But not everyone uses these methods: although the aforementioned 46% say that it is easy to overcome these systems and another 17% say that they are neither easy nor difficult, “only” 32% admit to having used some technique to overcome them. Of course, it is one thing that only 32% admit it and quite another that these figures are representative taking into account that they are confessing that they are doing something that they should not do. Methods vary, but many use fake birth dates or log in with their parents’ or siblings’ accounts. Complicit parents. The effectiveness of the Online Safety Act depends largely on the family environment, with data suggesting that at least a quarter of parents are uncooperative. The study indicates that 26% of parents have allowed their children to ignore or overcome these age verification systems, and in fact 17% admit have actively helped their children to evade these controls while 9% simply turn a blind eye. It’s not that big of a deal. Many parents justify this “help” by indicating that they understand the risks of their children accessing these platforms, but prefer to supervise the use of services such as TikTok or video games themselves. The idea: allow your children to bypass restrictions to play with friends or stream, but theoretically under your supervision. The failure of putting doors to the field. It’s not just that age verification systems are easy to overcome: The thing is that they do not eliminate risks completely either. In the Internet Matters study, almost half of the minors surveyed (49%) indicated that they had recently encountered toxic material on the Internet. This makes it clear that even children who do not try to bypass these controls still encounter inappropriate content. There are those who advocate going further and push for the end of online anonymity. Image | Jeremiah Lawrence In Xataka | The EU has just ready its app to verify age on the internet. And Ursula von der Leyen warns: “There are no more excuses”

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.