behaving

SPC was the mobile brand for seniors. Now it has a system that learns when your grandfather stops behaving as usual

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SPC has been digesting for a year the change that Teresa Acha-Orbea, its general director, described us at MWC 2025: going from a telephone manufacturer for seniors to a comprehensive technological services company. Again in Barcelona and again at the MWC, the company from Alava has presented the first product that materializes this transformation. It’s called Zeus Halo, and it’s a predictive telecare platform built around a hub domestic 5G with a 12-inch screen, four microphones and IoT connectivity to integrate sensors, activity bracelets and other home devices. It appears on the right in the image that heads these lines. The proposal is based on a demographic premise that defines our country today: Spain ages. According to INE projections, In 2030 almost a third of the population will be over 60 years oldand a growing portion of that group lives alone. Current telecare systems work reactively, waiting for something to happen before acting. Zeus Halo points in the opposite direction: the system learns the user’s behavior patterns. What time do you get up, how many times do you go to the bathroom, when do you leave the house… When these habits change abruptly, the device generates a preventive alert that reaches the smartphone of family members or caregivers, or directly to third-party telecare platforms. “If this person usually goes to the bathroom several times a day and suddenly they are only in the living room, something is happening,” explains Acha-Orbea in the stand of SPC in the Spanish Pavilion. It can also detect falls through the activity bracelet, monitor heart rate or temperature, and send alerts if the person leaves and does not return. The hardware does not require a router, or even that there is a WiFi network in the house, because the hub It carries a 5G SIM and covers all the sensors in the home, which eliminates a common installation barrier for this user profile. Compatible sensors include presence, door opening and smoke detectors, in addition to wearables. Cameras are technically possible, but SPC has decided not to incorporate them by default: “We all want to maintain our privacy, at least visually,” says Acha-Orbea. The second leg of Zeus Halo is the conversational agent. The platform includes a voice assistant that learns the user’s tastes and interests and maintains conversations adapted to them, with reminders for medication, medical appointments or birthdays that are delivered as voice calls instead of text messages, because “SMS are not usually read”, something that was already explained to us a year ago. The system can also organize secure video calls with family members through its own application, suggest activities inside and outside the home or connect Zeus Halo users with common interests. The unwanted loneliness of older people has been on the public agenda for years, The product will be launched before the end of the year in two modalities: ORa version for retail intended for families who want to install it in their parents’ or grandparents’ home And another institutional version for councils, municipal social services, residences, telecare and insurance companies that need to monitor their users proactively. SPC has clients such as CaixaBank or the Generalitat of Asturias in its portfolio, which gives it direct access to the type of organization it targets with the B2B version. The launch of Zeus Halo is accompanied by a brand repositioning. SPC launches logo, website (now in onspc.com) and a new definition of itself: “technology consultancy” that combines manufacturing, systems integration and consulting under the umbrella ‘human by design. The company, founded at the end of the eighties taking advantage of the liberalization of telecommunications, which for decades lived by selling landlines and mobile phones adapted for the elderly, today has 78 employees and headquarters in Vitoria, Lisbon and Shenzhen. It sells about 400,000 units per year of basic phones for seniors and about 30,000 adapted smartphones. It is, according to its own figures, the first Spanish brand in that niche with 50% of the national market. The transition that Zeus Halo embodies has not come for free. SPC has had to recruit software engineers and is setting up its own engineering in China to work directly with software manufacturers. chipsets. He 2G blackoutwhich forced the company to redesign its catalog a few years ago, turned out to be the lever that turned “dumb” devices into platforms capable of exchanging data. Zeus Halo is the next step in that same logic: a little hardware gadget that becomes the connected brain of the home. In Xataka | There is a good thing about having your grandchildren put in a hat: science suggests that it is a great shield against cognitive decline Featured image | Xataka

Efffetá and Emaus sold as “Catholic retreats.” Now his organizers are investigated for behaving as sects

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Problems in the so -called Spanish “Catholicism”: the HAM, one of the associations behind the secretists Catholic retreats Efffetá and Emaus, is being investigated. After the complaints that support the actions of the archbishopric of Madrid, some mysterious and transformative activities that have been receiving close attention, not always positive, in the past months. What happened. The Archbishopric of Madrid has decided in 2025 intervene and dissolve HAMan association that was falsely presented as a religious congregation. The reasons include numerous allegations of heresies, sexual abuse, spiritual and power abuses, as well as behaviors considered “sectarian,” how to separate the youth of their families. The investigation was led by the Rota court, with the support of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Civil Guard, which also analyzes a possible case of continued abuse. The tentacles of the work. The measures affect not only Madrid but other Spanish dioceses, such as Toledo, Sevilla and Getafe, where the HAM had presence and convents. The HAM (acronym for merciful love sisters) had been approved as a public association of faithful in 2007 and came to have a secular branch of about 300 members. The association was famous especially for organizing retreats Efffetá and Emausspear heads (especially the first) of the known as “Catholicism Guay”. Catholicism … Guay? Emaus are Contemporary Catholic retreats They have acquired Great notoriety In Spain and Latin America for its approach, its secrecy and its emotional impact. Emaus He was born in the seventies in Miami and is oriented to adults. Efffetá is inspired by its structure but is an activity aimed at young people between 18 and 30 years old. Born in Colombia in 2013 and expands rapidly, arriving in Spain only a few months later. Both retreats are Initiatives promoted by lay that have previously gone through the experience, and that they are called “servants.” Those who attend for the first time are called “walkers.” Secretism is key. One of the key standards of these retreats is secretism: participants must deliver mobiles and watches at the beginning and are asked to reveal anything about the activities to “not anticipate surprise” to future assistants. The motto of retreats, in fact, is “what is said here, here stays.” And what is lived there? Testimonies of personal transformation, group dynamics, cults of worship and symbolisms such as masks, strings or the construction of symbolic “walls”. In addition, these retreats cannot be repeated: it is only allowed to attend as a participant once in life. Subsequently, it can only be returned as a server, helping in the organization for others. Serious complaints. Although its many defenders defend secrecy as an integral part of the experience, to the point of taking it to its famous motto, it is what raised suspicions from the beginning (the psychologist Miguel Pearl spoke of a “Emotional and ideological bombardment”), which have been confirmed with the case of HAM, dissolved upon receiving “multiple complaints of abuse of power, abuse of consciousness and affective-sexual incidents.” The intervention of the ecclesiastical authority responds, in addition to the complaints, to a concern for methodologies that can lead to emotional manipulation, families or thought control, all characteristics of the sects. Hakuna connection. If we talk about “guay Catholicism” it is inevitable to refer to the group of Catholic pop mass hakuna. This new spirituality for young Christians has a lot to do with the activities of Efffetá and Emaus, and eldiario.es stands outIn fact, that the town of Las Rozas where the musical movement led by the priest and ex of the Opus Dei José Pedro Manglano carries out was the old headquarters of the daughters of merciful love. At the moment, the archdiocese is erasing every trace of the Internet HAM: the Hamilías YouTube channeland his videoserie ‘GODIDIENCIAS“. Everything suggests that the popular retreats managed by the association could disappear or, at least, take a turn towards a less mysterious orientation. Cabacera | Efffetá In Xataka | The Bible was always the most sacred book. The young Christians are filling it with post-ps, underlined and cuquis covers

Nothing like a dog or cat behaving like a person. That is why the Pet dramas made with ia

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Although seven years ago of “We have to invent dramas“, The phrase has not lost an apex of current affairs. In 2025, in fact, the dramas that we are inventing are the pet dramas: videos in which pets exquisitely characterized as people interact with humans or other animals, reaching millions of visualizations. Of course, All generated with artificial intelligence. What are they. The concept is so simple that it is overwhelming. Extremely short videos, no more than 90 seconds, generated by AI and with animals carrying out completely human behaviors. But not anthropomorphized animals in the Disney style: animals often dressed in person’s clothes, yes, but with absolutely faithful faces to its royal counterparts, which wraps everything in a very curious air of nightmare solemnity. The phenomenon is originally from China and some videos have already exceeded 200 million views. 11 tricks to dominate Tik tok They are like people. The indisputable hook of these videos is the ability to emotionally connect with audiences around the world, since they reflect feelings with which we can identify ourselves at a global scale (rescue stories, melodramas, romance, all with the level of “beautiful” to maximum power). The ease of videos to connect with other fashion trends in social networks, such as Chinese microdramas Or the reactions videos have made the rest. Some examples. There are multiple accounts that are developing pieces that can be attached to the PET dramas, but are complicated to locate outside China without knowing the language. Some western accounts such as Petdrama93 In Tiktok or Pet drama On YouTube they extract and adapt original Chinese videos, and are among the first to take advantage of the trend outside Asia. Something similar does bichon.chon_lifethat combines surrealism and hyperrealism with the adventures of a Maltese bichon in Korea. But the authentic enjundia is in Chinese accounts difficult to track and that others like Orangecats29 They take the opportunity to hack. Quite possibly we will soon see here series of microvidearly from the Asian country as ‘His Highness Bichon Rules The Empire’, a series of historical setting on a Maltese bichon that claims its real title after growing in an orphanage. Or ‘The Cat Daddy Chronicles’, on a feline that raises a human baby. According to media like 8days its creators are greatly profiting the phenomenon, so we will not take long to see their arrival to other countries. Pets on the Internet. These videos by AI are just one more step in the humanization of domestic animals that has been living in social networks for years. Cats like Internet stars They are an already studied phenomenon, but in recent years it has been accentuated with movements such as Pet parenting: The increasingly accused trend of treating company animals as full members of the family, and even as children. He Birth decreasehe Delay in the formation of traditional families And the increase in loneliness in large cities are some of the reasons for this change in our perception of domestic animals. More human than humans. Pets have gone from being simple pets to occupy a central place in the family structure and digital narrative, and now it is the cats and dogs who have their social accounts and They become Influencers. The step towards total humanization and put them to raise babies or save humans (or dress poles and shoes) was sung. In Xataka | In Spain there are less and fewer children, so the ice cream industry has launched for a more buoyant market: dogs

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