Big

the brand that became big promising not to be like the others and ended up without its own place

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I started with OnePlus back in 2018, when I decided on a OnePlus 6 which offered a very interesting technical specifications and features at a price that would be unsustainable today. Today my mother has that same phone, and the device continues to work like a charm. At that time, the company was beginning to change its strategy, since selling the idea of flagship killer It was starting to be a problem. When OnePlus He started his career back in 2014.sold the promise of offering high-end mobile phones at a price that should not exist. That promise made it one of the most beloved brands of recent Android. That same promise, broken little by little over the last decade, is also a good part of the reason why this week the company announced his definitive departure from the United States and Europetwo of its most important and also most competitive markets. Withdrawal from the United States and Europe This same Monday, the German media WinFuture published that OnePlus and its parent, Oppo, were preparing an announcement of “fundamental strategy changes” for this week. This big announcement, now officially confirmed by OnePlussuppose the withdrawal of the brand from the United States and Europe. Just like collect 9to5Google, the brand has had “years of setbacks and abandonment” that foreshadowed this outcome. The plan is that There will be no more launches of OnePlus phones, tablets or wearables in Europe or the United States; The remaining stock will be liquidated in the coming weeks and months; and devices already sold will maintain updates and technical support until the end of their life cycle. India and China are left out of the announcement, although Notebookcheck point that there the brand “will be practically irrelevant” as an independent firm, converted into an economic range within the Oppo catalog. From the impossible promise to the giant that absorbed it To understand how we got here, it is worth going back to 2014. OnePlus was born as a small, almost cult-like company, with a very simple idea: to offer high-end specifications at a price well below that of Samsung or Apple. The first model, the OnePlus Onewas sold by invitation only and arrived loaded with CyanogenModa version of Android highly valued among the most enthusiastic users. This is how the “flagship killer” label was born. that would accompany the brand for years. OnePlus One The turning point came in 2021, when OnePlus stopped operating as an independent company and became integrated into Oppowhich is part of the Chinese conglomerate BBK Electronics (the same group to which Realme, Vivo or iQOO belong). Months earlier, in October 2020, Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, had already left the company to found Nothing. Neither Pei nor OnePlus ever officially explained the reason for this departure, although Pei himself did speak later, in different interviews, that he felt that their room for radical innovation was reduced as OnePlus became an increasingly larger and more structured organization. Since then, OnePlus has been losing its own margin of decision within the group. Its prices rose, its software design became more and more similar to Oppo’s, and the differences that once made it unique began to fade. 2026 was already warning This year has been, in retrospect, the chronicle of an end foretold. In January, some first reports without clear sources They talked about a dismantling of the brand. OnePlus publicly denied it and many users breathed a sigh of relief. In March we knew about after a leak that the global withdrawal could come as soon as April. In April, OnePlus itself acknowledged that it was “evaluating its roadmap” in Europe, while cutting staff in the region, with losses concentrated in the communications, marketing and sales departments. From there, the pieces began to fit together faster. A rumor circulated a merger with Realme and that OxygenOS, OnePlus’ own operating system, would disappear to be integrated into ColorOS, Oppo’s software. Now, the disappearance of OxygenOS is already confirmedtowith all future devices moving to use the matrix system. In addition, OnePlus websites in several European countries, including Spain, France and Germany, began to redirect buyers to the Oppo store in some sections. From Lowyat.NET they add one more layer to the story. And according to the medium, the global RAM price crisis and storage would have hit a brand like OnePlus especially hard, which competes in the high-end without manufacturing its own chips or having the purchasing volume of Samsung or Apple to negotiate better conditions. Added to all this is the drop in sales as another determining factor behind the decision. A brand that stopped meaning something The launch of OnePlus 15 We especially liked it in this house, and today we continue to think that it is one of the best devices we can purchase. However, Oppo’s footprint has been growing to its maximum expression in this terminalboth in software and user experience. And Oppo has been conquering that ‘essence’ that has hooked the most diehard users to the brand for a long time. From TechStory they comment BBK Electronics has been rationalizing the number of brands it maintains for some time in markets where margins are narrow and each firm requires its own distribution, marketing and guarantee network. Maintaining several brands (Oppo, OnePlus, Realme) selling, in practice, variations of the same hardware stops making sense when only one can cover the same market. In fact, Slashdot and other media they point that brands like Redmi and iQOO, or Poco on Xiaomi’s part, could face similar decisions in the future, although it is still not clear which of them would be next. And what about the clients? For the millions of users who already have a OnePlus, the good news is that They will not be left without support from one day to the next. And in this sense, current devices will continue to receive software updates and technical support until their expected life cycle is exhausted, which in the case of the … Read more

He is tired of giving it away to Big Tech AI

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Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, has been getting creative on Twitter. Through a message almost as long as the one that his colleague Asha Sharma, CEO of Xbox, took the opportunity to communicate the dismissal of 3,200 people just a week ago, Nadella has shared something that disturbs him: in the age of AI, information is power, and You don’t like others benefiting from your data. Nadella cites the phrase coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Kenneth Arrow, whose paradox of the information market was that “the buyer does not know the value of that information until he has it, but by then he has acquired it, in effect, at no cost.” In Arrow’s formula, for the seller to convince the buyer of the value of the information, he or she must reveal enough of it to make the buyer interested. The problem is that at a certain point, the buyer will already know so much that they will not need to pay for that information. For Nadella, in the age of AI the problem is the other way around because it is the buyer of AI services who runs the risk of transferring knowledge valuable institutional, simply, to use artificial intelligence tools. For Nadella, companies are paying twice. “One with money, but another with something even more valuable: the personal and confidential knowledge that you must reveal for that intelligence to be useful.” According to the CEO, “the better you want the model to perform, the more knowledge of that type you will have to feed it.” That, precisely, is the problem. And this is what Nadella has dubbed the ‘Inverse Information Paradox’. The Inverse Paradox of Information Following Nadella’s reasoning, as a company gives more and more information to the owner of the artificial intelligence model, the asymmetry between both parties becomes increasingly skewed. You can imagine why: the seller learns more and more about your company as you use what you bought, while you learn very little about what the seller is learning in return. Did Nadella just describe what all companies do with search engines and services that traffic in our information? Maybe, but what the CEO is clear about is that, just as intellectual property patents solve one of the aspects of the Arrow paradox, since the inventor can reveal the idea without giving it away, the Inverse Information Paradox would need its own legal framework that protects companies that buy AI services. As? Well, that’s what we should see, since Nadella points out that models learn from the prompts that people write, the agents’ tools and, above all, the corrections that users make when a model makes a mistake. But Nadella goes further, stating that “When you consume intelligence, you are creating intelligenceand what you create should belong to you. This is your particular intelligence, the knowledge of time, place and circumstance, something that no one else can possess.” The message is tremendously ironic, but the reflection is useful and makes perfect sense: “if learning flows in only one direction, the economic value converges towards the owners of the learning infrastructure instead of towards the creators of knowledge.” Therefore, according to Nadella, “it is imperative that we distribute the learning infrastructure to be able to control that learning loop.” Advice for the age of AI (for companies, of course) In short, Nadella continues developing an idea in which what he explains is that the true competitive advantage of AI in the business environment does not lie in choosing the best model, but in owning its learning cycle. What if Microsoft ‘rents’ Claude either ChatGPTbut then it is Microsoft users who train that external model, that knowledge stays in Microsoft and don’t flow to Anthropic and OpenAI. At least free. Of course, and this would end up… Azurethe Microsoft cloud. Because the models belong to others, but if users access them through the Microsoft cloud, then Microsoft should keep all that valuable information, such as the corrections they make to the different models that have been used, remember, thanks to the Microsoft cloud. “If learning flows in only one direction, economic value converges towards the owners of the learning infrastructure rather than towards the creators of the knowledge” On the sidelines, in his very long message, the CEO of Microsoft proposes five points to ensure the company’s profits. Because, if in the era of the cloud companies accumulated data, in the era of AI they accumulate learning, and that learning should not escape if the following advice is followed: Control: create private evaluations, retain ownership of the company’s memory, comments and institutional context. Ability– Build proprietary learning environments within the confines of your own server to train or tune models without exposing company knowledge. Choice: decouple that from any individual model and be able to adapt to any AI model. Cost: thanks to that decision, you can bring together the context, models and efficient and profitable tasks without sacrificing quality. Capitalization: bringing together the four elements above to create a continuous learning loop that allows AI investors to multiply the value of the company. In the end, another thing that Nadella seeks is that there is no competition in the choice of models. Claude, GPT and Gemini are already good enough, so what companies that do not have equivalent models must do is compete to obtain all that knowledge of the learning loops, that does not escape from those companies and that, specifically, are built in Azure. Others have the models, Microsoft, Amazon and Google the servers. Now, not everyone agreesand both OpenAI and Anthropic they assure that their workflows and updates do not depend so much on those loops, but on other issues to keep frontier models evolving for customers who are not big whales like Microsoft. Because learning loops can work if you have Azure ready to provide the service, since the client does not care which model you use because there will always be a working model, but not all companies … Read more

The Xbox CEO promised a big Xbox reset. That translates into 3,200 layoffs and five studios looking for a new home

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Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xbox, arrived with the ax ready and prepared to cut off heads and, after days of rumors about layoffs and closure of studieswe already have the conclusion. It was expected that this July 6 we would have news about the restructuring of Xbox, the so-called ‘reset’ of the divisionand the figure that draws attention is the 3,200 people who will lose their jobs. That is not, by any means, the end of the story because since Bloomberg It is pointing to two very hard months for employees, although also a positive note with regard to some of the most reputable studios that it had purchased in recent years. Asha Sharma and the great Xbox reset Jason Schreier is one of the most reliable journalists in the video game industry and, as he points out in Bloomberg, in an internal email from Asha Sharma to the members of the company, the CEO ensures that the business “it is not profitable”. Sharma comments that Xbox needs to be “restarted” because they are operating with margins three to ten times lower than comparable businesses. It is not the first time that Sharma alludes to the disastrous situation of Xbox because the company’s profit margin had fallen to 3% (not that they were losing 3%, but it had fallen, but they were still making money), and after all the motivational messages, the new Xbox commandments and changing the name of the division to XBOX with capital letters, the conclusion to reverse the situation is that drastic decisions had to be made. According to Schreier, and as has been filtered, Starting today, 1,600 jobs will be eliminatedwhile it will execute another 1,600 over the coming months. In total, 3,200 layoffs at Xbox alone while Microsoft is also cutting 3,200 positions in other sections away from Xbox. 6,400 people sounds outrageous, but it is just 3% of a workforce of 228,000 people. They are not definitive figures, since Microsoft ensures that They are still in the early stages of the journey. and that there will be more changes ahead in an exercise in austerity to bet on the only thing that seems to excite companies: artificial intelligence. But beyond eliminating so many jobs, the big question of what will happen to the studies was on the table. The state of Xbox studios In recent days there has been talk of several studios that could be closed, sold or “released” and at Xataka we have stayed away from those rumors, but now Schreier sheds a little light on the matter. It may seem like a consolation for fools, but Xbox seems like it won’t dismantle them. Ninja Theory (creators of ‘Hellblade’ and Undead Labs (‘State of Decay’) will be sold to unspecified buyers. The two studios will continue working for the moment on announced games (Senua’ and ‘State of Decay 3’). Double Fine (Psychonauts’) and Compulsion Games (‘South of Midnight’) will separate and become private studios again. Sharma assures that the two will retain their intellectual properties (thank goodness), but things look uncertain for Arkane Lyon. The studio is developing a ‘Blade’ game, but Microsoft is “reviewing possible strategic options to sell or spin off the studio). Why is things not clear with Arkane? Because French laws protect more than American ones and Microsoft is exploring the avenues it has. These five studies were never bestsellers, but They were purchased under the management of Phil Spencer to ‘fatten up’ the catalog of a recently presented Game Pass and Sharma now notes that “they created significant value, but they did not grow at the rate we expected.” The new CEO’s strategy, in fact, seems different from Phil’s. While under his command many (too many) studies were purchasedSharma points to smaller models of supporting independent creators, alluding to the fact that “it is neither possible nor desirable to own all the large independent studios.” The future of Xbox To finish, Sharma wants Xbox to reach one billion players daily to see a future in which Xbox is bigger, not smaller.” He assures that “this year we will invest as much in Xbox as ever, but with better focus, greater discipline and clarity, all in the service of making Xbox a place where everyone has a place.” At the moment, those who have no room are the 3,200 laid off now, which are added to the thousands laid off by Xbox in the last two years. And we will have to wait to see what happens inside ZeniMax, also owned by Xbox and where the developers of big franchises like ‘Wolfenstein’, ‘Fallout’ or ‘The Elder Scrolls’ are located. We will also have to wait and see what happens to studios that become independent because it is not exactly good news. Without the Microsoft umbrella, it may be difficult for those studios to keep all employees, so be cautious with the futures of Double Fine and Compulsion. In short, another sad day for the video game industry. In Xataka | Sony has told you why it stops selling games in physical format. The real reason, of course, is the same as always: money

Peter Thiel believes that the Holy See is making a big mistake

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Peter Thiel doesn’t usually bite his tongue, and he didn’t do so a few days ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival. The investor and co-founder of Palantir and PayPal He participated in a talk in which he accused Pope Leo XIV of being (unknowingly) at the service of the Chinese Communist Party. The reason: his last encyclical, Magnificent Humanitas. Thiel’s argument. In this text the Pope advocated regulate AI to avoid misuse of technology. For Thiel, although this message may resonate with people around the world concerned about AI, it will hardly have a similar effect in China, where the Catholic religion is a minority. The Pope is “working for the Chinese communists”. For Thiel, this means that the encyclical only stops one of the two major sides in the race for AI, and leaves Beijing free to continue advancing without any type of moral brake. Conclusion, according to this magnate: the Pope “is working for the Chinese communists.” This comes from afar. A few months ago, in March, Thiel already offered a series of private lectures on the Antichrist. As it turned out later, this event bothered the Vatican so much that two Catholic universities they had to go out to clarify who had not participated in its organization. For the tycoon, the Antichrist might not be a person, but a world government who takes power promising to protect humanity from existential threats like AI. Thiel didn’t stop there. In addition to this accusation about the Pope, Thiel also warned that a “democratic-socialist coup d’état” is taking place in the United States. Without any evidence, he accused Anthropic (which he called “woke liberal”) that it would use its models to manipulate the 2028 elections in favor of Democrats. Interested speech. But this investor and entrepreneur has its own “agenda” and a few ideas quite pilgrims. He was one of Donald Trump’s first supporters in Silicon Valley, and as pointed out on CNN, he also helped boost the political career of the US vice president, J.D. Vance. The latter worked at Mithrill Capital, the investment firm co-founded by Thiel himself, before making the leap into politics. Image | Gage Skidmore | Catholic Church England and Wales In Xataka | If things go wrong for me, it’s because of the politicians; If I do well, it is thanks to me: the bias that damages democracy

Netflix’s latest big ratings success turns the formula into a phenomenon

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Nobody expected that’I will find you‘ was Harlan Coben’s best premiere for Netflix, and in fact, it has not been. However, eleven days after its arrival on the platform, it accumulates more views than almost any other fiction of 2026 in that same period: 58.1 millionand number one in more than 80 countries. The figure reaches milestones that only a handful of productions have reached in the entire history of the platform. And that, as we say, is not even the author’s best premiere with Netflix. What is it about? The series follows David Burroughs (Sam Worthington), a man who has been serving a life sentence for five years for the murder of his three-year-old son, a crime he has always denied having committed. Everything changes when his ex-sister-in-law, Rachel Mills (Britt Lower), brings him evidence that the boy could still be alive, opening the possibility that the original investigation was manipulated. Convinced that he has been the victim of a conspiracy, David escapes from prison and, together with Rachel and while being pursued by the FBI, unravels a web of family secrets that questions everything he thought he knew about his past. The author factory. Harlan Coben is certainly no newcomer to Netflix. The platform signed an agreement with him in August 2018 to adapt fourteen of his novels, expanded in 2022 with twelve more titles, including the eleven novels by Myron Bolitar, one of the researchers who star in his intrigues (and who is actually a representative of athletes). ‘I will find you’ is the first produced by an American team, after eight years transferring the original plots to the United Kingdom, Poland, France, Spain or Argentina. Some milestones of Coben’s adaptations. ‘Wiles‘ was the most watched series globally in the first half of 2024, with 107.5 million views, which placed it in seventh place in the history of English-language series on Netflix. ‘On the Run’ generated 15.6 million views in its first week and managed to unseat ‘Stranger Things’ from number one in the United States. Astronomical figures, surpassing even this ‘I will find you’, and which attest to Netflix’s good nose for detecting a vein. One that, in addition, insistently repeats certain plot lines: disappearances, family secrets, hidden identities, all of this is grouped under the “Harlan Coben Collection“which currently has 13 films. The public praises what the critics do not. Curiously, Coben’s adaptations do not have particularly high critical acceptance. There are some like ‘Silence in the snow‘ that have very low marks on Rotten Tomatoes (34%), and others that raise the average a little, such as ‘Safe‘ and its 73% of the public and 71% of the critics. But in general, the grades are closer to passing by the skin of their teeth: this ‘I will find you’ it has 63% of the public and 61% of the critics. None of this erodes in the least the audience phenomenon that adaptations represent. What is coming. While Netflix enjoys the success of ‘I’ll Find You’, Coben’s adaptation machinery does not stop (because they are always self-contained stories that work in a single stroke, with no option for second seasons) and ‘Myron Bolitar’ is already in preparation, the series that David E. Kelley (‘Big Little Lies’, ‘Presumed Innocent’) will co-write and co-direct with Coben himself. As a novelty, it is the first adaptation designed as a long-running series and not as a closed miniseries. Good times for comfortable, effective suspense with no other ambitions than to provide an acceptable dose of intrigue and chills. In Xataka | Of course you don’t remember anything that happened in the last season of your favorite series. It’s deliberate

Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

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The increasing incidence of cancer in young adults is one of the most debated topics in recent oncology. In recent years, exhaustive reviews have warned of an increase in diagnoses in those under 50 years of agealthough medical science had long been searching for the underlying mechanism that connects the dots between modern lifestyle and the early onset of this hated disease. The answer. A new study recently published seems to have found a key piece of the puzzle, which is nothing more than that our cells are aging faster than our ID card. This is the conclusion of research published in the journal Nature that indicates that accelerated biological aging is associated with a greater risk of developing early-onset cancers, especially solid cancers such as lung, stomach and also uterine cancer. Two concepts. To understand the finding, we must first differentiate between chronological age and biological age. The first of these is immovable, since it is nothing more than the years that have passed since our birth. But biological age is flexible, since it is calculated by evaluating the physiological state of a person through blood biomarkers and metabolic profiles. It reflects how “old” our tissues and organs really are. How to measure them. To measure this, Tian’s team used models already consolidated in scientific literaturesuch as PhenoAge and the Klemera-Doubal method. With these tools, they crossed the data of more than 150,000 adults from the UK Biobank and approximately 10,000 program participants. All of Us of the United States. The result shows a dangerous imbalance. This means that those people born in more recent decades had a greater tendency to have a biological age higher than that corresponding to their date of birth. And this time “jump” has direct clinical consequences such as the appearance of cancer. To be more specific, it has been seen that every time we have a person with a biological age higher than their corresponding age, they have an 8% higher risk of having early-onset solid cancer before the age of 50. If we compare the extremes, individuals located in the tertile with the greatest biological aging have a 15% greater risk of developing the disease compared to those in the tertile with the least biological wear and tear. The context. The main thing is not to fall into alarmism, since, although it is true that cancer is increasing in the youngest people in society, it is also increasing in all remaining bands due to multiple factors such as general population aging and better screening methods that allow us to detect cancer earlier. However, the specific data on early onset are undeniable, since large studies point to significant increases in thyroid, breast, colon, kidney and endometrial tumors in the 20 to 49 age group. Colorectal cancer, specifically, is the one that worries the most due to its escalation in young adults. The lifestyle. That we are biologically aging much faster than we should is not magic, but rather it seems to be influenced by different factors related to lifestyle. These include rates of youth obesity, prolonged consumption of diets rich in ultra-processed foods, a sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to environmental toxins. What this new work provides is the quantification of the damage, since these risk factors accelerate the biological clock. We must keep in mind that the human body is exposed to pro-inflammatory factors for more years from early stages of life, which makes it easier for DNA damage to accumulate faster than cellular mechanisms can repair it. In Xataka | Experts agree about the sun and hair: “It is one of the most exposed areas and one of the most forgotten”

The big question in the middle of this terrible heat is whether we leave the air conditioning on or turn it off and turn it on again.

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In Spain, there are about 7.3 million homes with air conditioning and most of them don’t know what kind of voracious and carefree critter they have on their hands. They sense it, of course; They have heard rumors, it is true. But only when summer comes and it is eaten around 30% of the electricity bill It is when they understand the reality behind the ‘fresquito’. That’s when the moral debates also begin. And just when he is going to leave through the door, our protagonist takes control of the air conditioning, directs it towards the split and asks himself… should I turn it off or not? Is it better to turn it off even if when you return the house has become an oven and you have to cool it down again? Or is it true that turning on the device is so expensive that it is better to leave it running all the time? This is the story of how an old piece of advice has become so embedded in people’s consciousness that it continues to operate even though HVAC technology has changed. It is an answer, also, to one of the big questions of the summer. From “don’t turn it off” to inverter… As I say, air conditioners have changed a lot. Old compressors had very high consumption peaks and this is the origin of the idea that turning it off is expensive. But current investors They work in a different way and their speed is modulated so that the starts are smooth. However, this is more of a technical issue. The most important reason to turn off the air is another. Inside and outside. What really rules in all this is the heat outside the house, the heat inside and the insulation that separates it. The first two factors are important because heat enters the house at a rate proportional to that difference. That means, roughly speaking, that if the house is warm, the heat enters more slowly. In this sense, if we are going to go out for a few hours, it is best to turn off the air (or raise the thermostat a lot). He US Department of Energy He says it bluntly: the starting peak lasts seconds and you also have to pay for the machine hours. Is it a good idea to turn it on and off while we are inside? As the OCU recognized, An inverter should be left to regulate only while you are at home. (without constantly turning it on and off by hand) and turning it off “when leaving the room permanently.” In any case, the question that can save us is not so much whether we turn it off or not as how many degrees and how many hours we have it on. The world of air conditioning is full of myths: from those who think that setting the thermostat lower will cool the room faster to those who confuse the legal minimum for public spaces (27 degrees) with what experts recommend (about 24). The last thing to keep in mind is humidity… cooling may have become relatively trivial thanks to inverter technologybut dehumidifying is not so much. So in very humid climates it pays more not to turn off the air because recovering a comfortable environment costs more. But do we turn off or not? It depends on the situation. For a short getaway like picking up bread or running a quick errand, we can leave the air on. The difference is almost non-existent. If we are going to be away for a long time, it is better to turn it off or, at the very least, raise the thermostat. Image | Kien Nguyen In Xataka | Air conditioning in summer has a double standard of measurement: it cools us but gives us torticollis

Showering with cold water before sleeping in a heat wave seems like the best idea. Science warns that it is a big mistake

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Heat waves are already with us and in many places in recent days we have seen how they has far exceeded 40 ºC in many parts of our country. But the problem is not only that it is difficult to leave the house, but that sleeping becomes practically impossible for many peoplehaving a very fragmented sleep with different awakenings or even suffering from insomnia due to not being able to fall asleep. A solution. Faced with this great problem, common sense and desperation push us to get under the shower to be able to cool our body as much as possible just before entering bed to at least be a little cooler and try to fall asleep. But the problem here is that showering activates our body and can have a quite different effect than what we are looking for, making it very difficult to fall asleep. The mechanism of sleep. Something that we must keep in mind is that for our brain to understand that it is time to sleep, it needs a very specific physiological signal, which is the drop in the body’s core temperature. But when we take a shower of ice water, we get instant relief on the skin, but we cause our blood vessels to constrict so that our blood does not drop below its precious 36-37 ºC. In other words, the blood vessels They close to protect the internal heat of the body by sending less blood to our skin. The result. Although we get very fresh skin, a few minutes after getting out of the shower, the body experiences a rebound effect, retaining central heat and remaining in a state of alert because for the body there is a threat to which it has had to respond. On the other hand, warm or hot water does just the opposite, since, according to the group of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, hot water stimulates the thermoregulatory system, causing blood to travel from the inner core of the body to the extremities. This facilitates a massive dissipation of body heat once we leave the bathroom, and that subsequent drop in core temperature is the biological switch that induces sleep. The warm water. Knowing all this, we can conclude that we should not use hot or cold water when showering, but that the middle ground is what we should look for. This is what an exhaustive review published in the journal points out. Sleep Medicine, where it was analyzed thousands of data to reach the conclusion that the optimal water temperature to improve sleep quality is between 40 and 42.5 ºC. But in a context of great heat like the one we are experiencing, experts clarify that the ideal is to look for the point of warm water, since the objective is not to roast ourselves, but to relax the blood vessels to promote heat loss from inside the body. The time. Showering and immediately getting into bed (or getting on top of the sheets) doesn’t work at all, since the body needs time to cool down. This same study we were referring to showed that the optimal time to take this shower is between 1 and 2 hours before going to bed. And best of all, it is something that has been shown to reduce the time it takes to fall asleep. These data are reinforced by a large-scale observational study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, where, after analyzing more than 1,000 adultsresearchers confirmed that bathing between 61 and 180 minutes before going to bed is directly associated with faster falling asleep, thanks to physiological changes that are related to body heat. Images | Slaap In Xataka | An expert clarifies the main mistake of sleeping with air conditioning: “It is totally unnatural and we rest worse”

The World Cup has turned bar terraces into the big business of the summer. In Asturias this has opened a thorny debate

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The World Cup is much more than football. Each ‘La Roja’ match is also an event capable of paralyzing the country and a lifeline (wink, wink) for a sector, the hospitality sector, that deals with changes in consumption of alcohol and the growing competition from the merchants. However, bars do not have it equally easy in all cities when it comes to exploiting the World Cup gold medal. Although in much of Spain it is allowed to take TVs out to terraces to broadcast matches, the requirements of the town councils do not always coincide. In fact there are consistories that prohibit the use of screens outdoors. One figure: 30%. Spain is a football country. That is not debatable. When we talk about hospitality, however, football is much more than a sport or a passion: it is above all a powerful economic lever. The employers’ association of the sector calculates that the businesses that broadcast the World Cup will skyrocket their cash between 25 and 30% on match days. What’s more, Hospitality of Spain estimates that if ‘la Roja’ reaches the final it will inject 130 million extra to your billing. Terrace slopes. In view of these figures and in the midst of the dog days, it is easier to understand why bars in a good part of Spain have asked for permission to, exceptionally, put televisions on their terraces. Their proposal is very simple: given the interest aroused by the tournament and how overwhelming crowds in closed venues can be, they want to install screens outside to broadcast ‘La Roja’ matches. More comfort, more income. It’s nothing exceptional. What is striking is that this request has not received the same response in all city councils in Spain. While some councils They have given the green light to the installation of TVs on terraces, imposing only some restrictions, others they have closed in band to that possibility arguing that it would go against noise regulations. There are also town councils that allow the installation of screens outside the bars, but require that all matches be broadcast. no sound. The case of Asturias. Although the topic has generated headlines throughout the country, probably the most interesting case is that of Asturias. There the hotel management association OTEA headed to the town councils requesting permission so that customers of bars and restaurants could follow the World Cup matches from the terraces, through TVs. In cities like Oviedo either Gijon The restaurateurs received the green light (with certain conditions), but other councils have told them no. It is the case of Aviles and Langreowho have decided that the bars’ request clashes with other prioritiessuch as the “right to rest” of the neighbors. “It is not possible to authorize non-compliance with the Law 37/2003of November 17, of noise, since the exemption from compliance with the acoustic emission and reception indicators on terraces (…) would be an action null and void,” states a resolution published by the town of the Nalón region. Click on the image to go to the tweet. The law is made… cheated, as the saying goes. That the local authorities are not convinced by the installation of screens on the terraces does not mean that the hoteliers of Langreo or Avilés have not looked for a way for their clientele to enjoy the games from the terraces without breaking the regulations. So reveals it The New Spainwhich tells how yesterday in Avilés there were bars that placed their screens strategically, next to their windows and facing the street, so that customers sitting on the terraces could follow the game. “We always meet at this bar. What seems incredible to me is the City Council’s rule of not playing loudly,” commented one of the clients who followed the meeting of Spain and Saudi Arabia from outside a bar in Avilés. It is not the first time that an international football tournament is accompanied by controversy in the Asturian hospitality industry. It happened two years agowhen OTEA disgraced the Avilés and Gijón City Councils for their decision to install giant screens in public spaces to follow the Euro Cup final. Beyond the criticism for the loss of customers, in the case of Avilés the hoteliers recalled that shortly before the City Council had prohibited them from doing something similar on their terraces. One dilemma, several answers. The most curious thing is that, although the laws on noise pollution are common to the entire country, not all councils have responded in the same way to the hoteliers’ request. In Toledo, for example, they has given the green lightbut on condition that the equipment works without sound. The only exception is venues licensed for music installations. In Albacete, the City Council has also authorized outdoor screens during ‘la Roja’ matches, the semi-finals and the final on July 19, but with an important fine print: whether or not the matches have ended, the TVs must be silent at midnight and in the Special Acoustic Protection Zone (ZPAE) the devices will not be able to emit sound even in the afternoons. Something similar happens in Salamanca. In any case, for hoteliers these are better conditions than those imposed by Teruel. Over there, COPE chain advancesrestaurants have found a response similar to that of Avilés. World yes, but with control. In general, even the most permissive city councils impose limits on match broadcasts: screens on terraces are usually allowed only for ‘special’ events, such as matches played by Spain, the semi-finals or the final in July, and even in those cases limits on noise and time restrictions apply. In the case of the capital, Hostelería Madrid assures that article 11 of the evening terrace ordinance prevents the installation of televisions outside the premises, which makes it difficult for bars and cafes to make the tournament profitable. Image | Jorge Franganillo-Flickr (Image taken in Lisbon in 2024) In Xataka | 24 years ago Oliver Kahn sued EA and won. Then a new goalkeeper appeared in football games: Jens … Read more

Big Tech offers you up to 15 GB of free cloud storage. O2 Cloud makes them look ridiculous and gives 10 TB to its customers

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O2 customers are in luck. The operator communicated yesterday a fantastic change in your offer – so far O2 Cloud offered 1 TB of cloud storage included in that plan. Now that capacity is expanded dramatically, with customers now able to access 10TB of cloud storage. It is something amazing if we compare this offer with the space offered by default by Google, Microsoft or Apple, but there are some drawbacks. 10 TB “free”. Years ago, Movistar created Movistar Cloud as an option to create backup copies of your files, and that was striking from the first moment because it also the service’s storage space was theoretically unlimited. O2 Cloud joined that offer some time later, and did so initially with 1 TB of free space (included in the plan) which is now multiplied by ten. If you only have an O2 mobile, you also have 10 TB. Until now this offer was valid for fiber users (whether they also had mobile lines or not), but now O2 offers O2 Cloud with 10 TB of storage included to any user of its services: if you have an O2 mobile line, with or without fiber, you have 10 TB of O2 Cloud for free, included in the plan. Apps for Android and iOS. The service is intended to be a “Dropbox” or “iCloud” that constantly backs up your photos and videos to O2’s cloud storage space. Just install the android app or that of iOSconfigure it by registering for the service and that’s it: we will have those copies for free as we are O2 customers. In the image, the O2 Cloud interface from the web browser. We can view the photos directly there, and the operation is surprisingly fluid. Also on Windows or Mac desktop. It is also possible to use O2 Cloud to save images, videos or documents from a personal computer. I have tested it on my Mac, and it is possible to download the desktop client so that it works in the background: everything you put in the “O2 Cloud” folder will automatically be synchronized with the operator’s cloud storage space. Integrated image editor. This service seems especially designed to safeguard the photos on our mobile phone so that if we lose it or it is stolen, they will remain safe. But it is also a great service for viewing them (it runs very smoothly) and even editing them: the integrated editor offers some basic filters (Sepia, Gray, etc.) and also a few editing tools that give more added value to the solution. The integrated editor is limited, but it can get us out of a quick fix. Customize folders or albums. From there, it is possible to access and download content from our devices, and in O2 Cloud we can also create personalized folders or albums to organize photos and documents based on their theme, location, etc. O2 makes Big Tech look ridiculous. The O2 Cloud service is surprisingly generous, especially when compared to what big technology companies offer. Google offers 15 GB of free storage when you create an account, while Apple and Microsoft offer 5 GB. If you want more, you have to pay, and that’s where subscriptions to paid plans like Google One/Workspace come in, Apple iCloud+or Microsoft 365/Family. We have made a small comparative table, and it is clear that those 10 TB of O2 Cloud are a true gift for the operator’s customers. Ability Monthly price o2 cloud 10TB Included with Fiber/Mobile plan Apple iCloud+ 6TB 29.99 euros Google One 5TB 21.99 euros Microsoft 365 Family 6TB (Up to 6 users, 1 TB per user) 13 euros Dropbox 3TB 12 euros But Big Tech offers other things. It is important to note that it is understandable that big technology companies are so stingy with the free space they offer to users: with hundreds (or thousands) of millions of customers, offering more capacity would force them to grow extraordinarily in resources in their data centers. But in addition, payment services such as Google One, iCloud+ or Microsoft 365 are rather “multiservice” because mix storage with productivity tools, security and, in some cases, AI plans. But if you only had iCloud for photos… However, many users are forced to contract Apple iCloud+ or Google One to maintain that backup of your photos in the clouds of these companies and “everything just works.” The O2 Cloud proposal presents a fantastic alternative for these users, because they get the same thing without paying extra: the plan they have with O2 would already serve to enjoy this service. The integration of those services will always be superior to that of O2 Cloud, of course, but for that basic backup use, the alternative seems extraordinary. What happens if I leave O2?. There is no permanence in O2, but logically if we go to another operator, we will lose access to O2 Cloud. The company gives 30 days to download the files if you unsubscribe before deleting them, which of course gives the option to recover all that data and save it, for example, on an external hard drive and then move it to another cloud service if we wish: there are no (unfortunately) tools or services that allow this “migration” from one cloud to another. Common Terms of Use. O2 Cloud has some terms of use and of privacy which are already common in this type of services. In O2 they explain for example that: “To manage some of the functions necessary to provide the service, we have contracted trusted suppliers who may have access to personal data, who will act as data processors and who will be contractually obliged to comply with their legal obligations as data processor, to maintain the confidentiality and secrecy of the information.” They also clarify that “some of the functions necessary to provide the service are contracted to data processors located outside the European Economic Area”, although they guarantee “an adequate level of protection of personal data”. The personal data … Read more

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