bill

removing magnets from the fridge saves exactly zero euros on your bill, although there are other things that do work

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The magnetic decorations that decorate refrigerators in many homes have been the subject of a curious urban legendthat they make our appliance consume more. “Everything in this myth is false,” Endesa pointed out one of the last times the rumor resurfaced. Refrigerator magnets do not have an impact on the electrical consumption of these appliances since the magnetic fields of the magnets that we place in our refrigerators are very weak. So much so that “they don’t even go through the refrigerator door,” the electric company continues to explain on the company blog. And it is that some of the magnets we place on our refrigerator barely have the strength to keep themselves in place, but nor the most powerful magnets in this range they could do it. We would need a very powerful magnet, outside the range of refrigerator magnets to affect its operation. “Only (would consumption increase) if the magnets on your refrigerator were electromagnets” answered a forum user Physics Forums back in 2012 when another user raised this question. Endesa has not been the only company that has spoken out in recent years about this urban legend. When we asked LGthey told us that it was a “myth”: “fridge magnets have no effect on consumption, shelf life or food. The magnets located on the outside of the refrigerator do not influence the operation or the internal cooling capacity of the appliance.” In that same line he answered us another manufacturer, Bosch, which assured that the magnets were not going to affect the operation at all beyond causing scratches on the surface or, if someone feels especially inspired and fills the door with magnets, they could affect the useful life of the door hinge if its weight increases a lot. In any case, they were very emphatic about it: it will never affect the electrical consumption of the appliance. How to save with the refrigerator. The refrigerators can assume the largest source of energy consumption behind heating and hot water and can account for almost a fifth of electricity consumption. They must be plugged in and running all day, which limits possible strategies to save on expenses, although some exist. The option that most reduces electricity consumption is one that may not be available to everyone: obtaining a more efficient refrigerator. We may not have yet paid off the one we have or we may not yet have the budget to change it, but opting for more efficient models will imply less long-term savings. Other ways to save are well known: keeping the door open as little as possible or not putting hot food in it are well-known tricks. Maintain seal from the refrigerator, yes, it goes a little further. To achieve this we must always make sure that there are no foods that could make it difficult to close and that the sealing elements (the rubber) are in good condition. Where we place the refrigerator can also affect its performance. Embedding it, placing it in sunlight, or near a heat source such as a radiator or oven can cause it to require more energy to keep its interior cool. Finally, we must keep the freezer frost free as far as possible. The frost works as an insulator (as if we had an igloo inside the freezer. This causes the freezer to require more energy to cool the products inside. In the midst of a unique energy crisis in almost half a century, saving electricity has become an obsession for some and a necessity for many. That is why it is important focus on those strategies that do allow us to save energy and money. Image | Giulia Hetherington A version of this topic was originally published in 2023. Unfortunately for science, it is still fully valid in 2026…

Bill Gates is responsible for the “biggest mistake of all time” that cost Microsoft 400 billion, according to the co-founder of Android

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Nobody is perfect. Not even the great tycoons who have taken technology companies to the peak of success. One of these examples is Bill Gates who during an interview recognized What has been the biggest mistake he has made in his time running Microsoft. And the co-founder of Android did not hesitate to mock him through social networks several years after this confession. Today we all associate the Android operating system with Google, which is the company behind it. But in its beginnings Android was in limbo between Microsoft and Google. This is where Bill Gates’ mistake was, who did not decide to bet on this operating system, causing Google to keep it and get the great performance it has today. Android co-founder gives a different version of Gates’ “biggest mistake” It was a few years ago during an interview with Julia HartzCEO of Evenbrite, where the Microsoft co-founder acknowledged that the biggest mistake he has made ““It’s the mismanagement that I got involved in that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is.” This mismanagement caused Google will develop Android before Microsoftand achieved the great success it has today. In addition to the many benefits that Android leaves today for being the operating system with the largest market share, 72.46% global share according to statistics from the end of 2025. That is why a bad decision and problems with antitrust laws meant that this operation was not closed. Although he tried to do something similar with Windows Phone, it didn’t turn out well as we have already seen. For Bill Gates there is only room for an operating system other than iOS on the market. And this is something that figure at 400,000 million dollars that he lost with this bad decision 20 years ago. He related it in the following way: The biggest mistake of all was the mismanagement I got into that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is, meaning Android is the standard platform for non-Apple phones. In reality, it is a winner-take-all market. If you have half as many applications or 90% of them, you are on your way to total ruin. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system, and how much is that worth? 400 billion dollars that would be transferred from company G (Google) to company M (Microsoft). For Gates, this is one of the biggest mistakes in history, and he has no doubt that if he had reached the mobile market before Google, Microsoft would be the company that would be dominating today. Their mistake was leaving Google with Android “free” until it developed Windows Phone. The best part of this story comes when the co-founder of Android appeared last year to comment on these words through your X account. In a publication he details that his goal when developing Android was to prevent Microsoft from controlling phones “as it did with computers, stifling innovation.” Click on the image to access the publication. With this concern that Microsoft could control the mobile world, the co-founder of Android affirms that “Sorry Bill, but you’re more responsible for the $400 billion loss than you think.” On this topic Steve Ballmer also spokethe charismatic former CEO of Microsoft, who admitted that this mistake by Microsoft was motivated by overconfidence and “arrogance” focused on the supremacy of the Windows brand. This led them to underestimate the competition and assume that they could dominate any new market by imposing their ecosystem, but evidently this was not the case. Images | Wikimedia Commons (UK Government) Via | Windows Central In Xataka | “In five years they will have to pay taxes”: Bill Gates has pointed out the elephant in the room of AI and humanoids A version of this article was published in 2025 in Genbeta

Get ready to pay 30% more on your bill this summer

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Spain has come to pay for consuming energy, marking a historic milestone of -10 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) on any given Sunday. Red Eléctrica data shows days where photovoltaic solar energy reaches more than 63% of the generation at times of maximum radiation, which is an undeniable success for our electrical system. And yet, this summer the electricity bill It will be almost 30% more expensive than last year. To understand how both things can be true at the same time, you have to understand what happens between the solar panel and your bill. The 41% you see and the 59% you don’t see. You look at the market price and think you understand your bill. You don’t understand her. That price—the one making the headlines, the one that hit negative numbers on Sunday—represents 41% of what you pay. The rest is a whole edifice of tolls, system charges and taxes that doesn’t appear on any headline but does appear on your bill each month. And here comes the most ironic trap of this entire story. The massive deployment of wind and solar achieved something that seemed impossible five years ago: moderating national inflation to 3.2%. An indisputable macroeconomic victory. However, that victory had a side effect that no one celebrated since by not exceeding the legal limit for price increases, the “deactivation clause” of the Government’s anti-crisis decree was automatically activated. The renewable shield worked so well that it disabled its own aids. From June 1, VAT on electricity and gas returns to 21%. During the day, renewable. At night, gas. And always, the invoice. During the day, Spain operates with almost free energy: an average at noon of just 1.65 euros per megawatt hour. The sun covers 67% of the demand for six hours in a row. The electrical system, in those hours, is an extraordinary machine. But as night falls, the story suddenly changes. Water covers only 21% of the demand. The wind, barely 13%. As Antonio Aceituno points outenergy market analyst at Tempos Energía, electricity at night costs 57% more than at midday. This is when the gas and coal plants have to be turned on again. And that nighttime lighting is what sets the tone for your receipt. With the arrival of summer, the equation worsens on all fronts. High temperatures reduce the efficiency of solar panels. Air conditioning triggers demand. The hydraulic shield gives way. And the geopolitical panorama is tightening from the outside: despite the pre-peace agreement between the United States and Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, gas travels by ship and those LNG tankers They will not arrive in Europe before August. With European storage stagnant at 37%, Tempos Energía predicts that electricity in the third quarter moves between 82 and 86 euros per megawatt hour. If the pact fails, above 90. 35% more expensive than the previous summer. The market that moves 7% in one afternoon without anything happening. Behind the price of electricity there is another layer that almost no one explains: the European gas market – reference TTF – works, in practice, like a casino. As energy expert Joaquín Coronado describesis a machine designed to transfer volatility to the end consumer. In a single recent session, the index moved more than 7% intraday without any real event to justify it. Only speculation of financial funds. And here comes the paradox that Coronado points out precisely: more than 75% of the energy negotiated in Spain already goes through bilateral contracts, at an agreed price, outside the speculative market. Three out of every four megawatts, shielded. But that remaining 25%—the one that is played every day in the marginalist market—is what sets the price of your entire bill. The minority rules over the majority. Added to this is a dysfunction that comes from the factory in the system design: Spanish demand is inelastic. When electricity shows ridiculous prices at midday, consumers do not react by consuming more to take advantage of the bargain—because they have no real incentives to do so, no smart meters that facilitate it, nor rates that reward it in real time. By not absorbing this excess of cheap energy, agents from France and Portugal end up buying it to export it. And that export, due to the dynamics of European coupling, drags our prices up. We give away the energy and they return the European price to us. Incomplete success. Spain has achieved an indisputable structural feat. We have become a European pioneer by decoupling, for much of the day, our electrical system from the worst international whims of gas, gaining valuable energy independence. However, the transition does not end with installing solar panels. As long as the sector continues to be immersed in internal wars blaming each other, as long as the grid lacks a massive battery system to store megawatts at zero cost and as long as the tax structure continues to suffocate the family bill, cheap electricity will continue to be a mirage on the screens of the financial markets. We generate almost free light at midday, yes, but the labyrinth that that energy runs through until you turn on the plug in your house we will continue to pay at the European luxury price. Image | Unsplash 1 and 2 Xataka | Resolving Spain’s strange paradox: if we generate cheaper energy than ever, why doesn’t the bill go down as much?

When asked “how much do you expect to earn” in a job interview, Bill Gates gives the definitive advice to get it right

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It doesn’t matter how much you have prepared for a job interview or whether you have an impressive resume, because when push comes to shove, in that face-to-face job interview, it is quite common for us to have our nerves on edge. Because beyond meeting the requirements, that first impression matters a lot. Furthermore, the job interview is a minefield full of trick questions where a false step can be very costly. Given that there are questions that hide more than what they say, you move along a fine line in which you have to try to answer honestly, bet on diplomacy and at the same time extract information and leave no room for doubt to get the job but not at any price. If there is a thorny question, it is ‘How much do you expect to earn?‘. Well, a person as influential and experienced as Bill Gates has a recommendation so as not to get the answer wrong. This is how Bill Gates gets out of the quagmire of ‘How much do you expect to earn?’ If you are asked about your salary expectations, the scenario is the following: if you say a value above what the company has programmed, you may be left out of the selection process, but if your proposal is too low, it may also happen that you get a job with a salary lower than what you would like and that at the same time sounds like underestimating the value of your work and experience. But Bill Gates has been there before and is clear about what to respond. And not just now, but it was in 2020 when the tycoon and billionaire behind Microsoft offers a way out of that thorny issue. More specifically in one of the interviews from the ‘State of Inspiration’ serieswhich pitted Gates face to face with basketball star Stephen Curry. For Bill Gates, the best response to not closing doors and looking good is not to offer an exact figure and to focus on the future, diverting attention from salary to long-term value. I hope the options package is good. I can take risks and I think the company has a great future, so I prefer to get stock options even over cash compensation. I’ve heard other companies are paying too much, but treat me fairly and strengthen the options. This is the move proposed by the tycoon, since in this way you reflect, on the one hand, your confidence in the company’s future project and, on the other, how you want to contribute to its success by applying your skills, so that the chances of achieving the contract are increased. This should soon stop being a problem. However, it is worth remembering that on June 7, 2026 comes into force the European Remuneration Transparency Directive (EU 2023/970). This is a salary transparency law by which companies are obliged to report the salary before the first interview. Therefore, although Gates’ advice may be useful for companies that break the law, or when you are interviewing at a startup that is not European, in theory within Europe we will soon no longer need to go around to get an idea about the salary we are going to receive. In Xataka | Bill Gates has been talking about AI for years. Now he thinks we are making the same mistake as with the arrival of computers Cover | Editing by Rubén Andrés (Unsplash (Arif Riyanto), Flickr (The Aspen Institute)) Via | The Economist

woke up with a bill of more than 18,000

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The cloud is somewhat invisible until the bill arrives. We build an application, we test one APIwe leave a budget set up and continue with our lives thinking that the system will warn if something goes out of plan. The problem is that warn is not the same as stop. And that difference, which may seem like a technical nuance, is exactly what separates a controlled test from a huge debt when a key is exposed, someone uses it and the charges begin to accumulate without us seeing it. That’s what he claims happened to Venturaxi, a Reddit user who told his story. According to GRYOnline.pl accountwent to sleep with a budget alert set to 10 Australian dollars (about 7.15 US dollars) and woke up to a bill of 25,672.86 Australian dollars in Google Cloud, just over 18,000 US dollars at the exchange rate. The user maintains that, during the night, some 60,000 unauthorized requests were made through an API key that he could not initially identify. The story, it should be stressed from the beginning, comes from his public testimony, not from an independent investigation. An alert may sound as the bill continues to grow The key is in a nuance that Google explains in its own documentation on budgets: a budget alert does not stop consumption, it only sends notifications when certain thresholds are reached. That is, it serves to inform us that the expense is close to or exceeds a figure, but it does not work as a switch that automatically cuts off the service. In normal use it may be enough to react in time. In a scenario with automated requests and a compromised key, however, the counter can continue running even though the notice has already been sent. The most delicate part of this story is better understood if we leave the jargon behind for a moment. An API key is, in practical terms, a key that allows an application to identify itself to a service and say: I am this account, let me in. As long as it is well stored, it fulfills its function. If it is exposed, another person can use it to generate requests that will be charged to that account. Google recommends protecting these keys, rotating them, and restricting them by domain or IP. Venturaxi claims that the password used came from an old gardening app created for his mother in Cloud Run. There appears one of the most confusing parts of the case. The user explains that, at first, he did not find that key in the usual list of AI Studio keys, although Google indicated it as the source of consumption. Later, saccording to his update on Redditmanaged to locate it in another section of the Google Cloud panel thanks to another user’s tip. The key matched by the visible name, not for the full keywhich made it difficult to follow the trail. The most frustrating part came when he tried to ask for help. In his publication, he says that he first dealt with automated agents, then with different support members, and later with escalation managers, without having a single person to follow the case from start to finish for days. He also maintains that, as the requests continued, he had to insist several times that his account had been compromised before getting an escalation. The other delicate point is at the account level. Venturaxi maintains that its billing account was automatically raised at a higher level due to its age and payment history, although the project affected was much more recent. According to the explanation he says he received from Google, this change responded to a relationship of trust associated with the account, not necessarily the specific project. The result, always according to his story, was that he was able to consume more than he expected, without clear notification or specific consent. The case has had a long history precisely because it does not appear isolated in the conversation. On Reddit, other users assure having experienced similar scares with unexpected charges, compromised passwords or difficult-to-resolve billing disputes. That doesn’t make every story verified evidence, but it gives us an idea of ​​what might be happening. At the same time, it helps to understand why venturaxi’s post has resonated: it points to a concern shared by several developers. According to the developer, the bill of 25,672.86 Australian dollars tfinished being canceled and Google would also have returned the $9,800 that, according to its story, had been distributed in five increasing collection attempts. The economic outcome, therefore, would have been resolved in their favor. Even so, the user maintains that he still had no clear answers about several points of the incident: how the key was exposed, what activated the account level jump or where exactly the traffic came from. The invoice of 25,672.86 Australian dollars ended up being canceled The most striking thing about this story is not only the number, but how easy it is to understand how something like this can get out of control. We are not talking about a large deployment or a huge infrastructure, but rather a key, an old app and an alert that did not do what many users could imagine. There is the warning for anyone working with these services, even in small tests: it is worth reviewing what is left open, what limits are real and what tools only inform us that the problem is already underway. Images | Xataka with Grok | charlesdeluvio In Xataka | You get a job offer from Spotify and another from Disney. What’s behind it is a phishing scam waiting

The Spanish atmosphere has been loaded with fuel and now it’s time to pay the bill

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Spain has been chaining one temperature record after another for a week and the culprit, as we have been explaining, is a subtropical ridge that the country has maintained between five and ten degrees above normal. Nothing particularly surprising, nothing that hasn’t happened two dozen times in the last few years. For complete the déjà vuIn fact, the same number has dragged a disproportionate amount of Saharan dust for days. And now, it’s time to suffer the consequences. Never corner a DANA. As I said, we can describe the third week of April with three words: heat, stability and suspended dust. But starting on the 23rd the situation changes and a trough is becoming detached from the general circulation and It is going to be configured in the form of DANA. The party starts here. The synoptic configuration is clear: a DANA in the southwest with the ridge still strong in the east and very warm air between the two structures. We have the basic ingredients of convection. What can we expect? AEMET forecast stormy showers locally stronghail and very strong gusts of wind in almost the entire interior of the Peninsula. Today, the highest risk areas are the west and center of the peninsula (Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, western Andalusia), the Pyrenees and the Iberian System. If everything continues as it is, April will end up as the third warmest month on record and all that atmospheric energy will be channeled over the land. To put it in perspective: all this is going to cause average temperatures to drop more than 14 degrees in a matter of days. What does the heat have to do with the storm? Physicists use the Clausius-Clapeyron equation to explain that the atmosphere’s capacity to retain water vapor grows by approximately 7% for each degree of warming. The hotter, the more water vapor; more water vapor, (if the conditions are right) wilder storms. It is true that we are experiencing an unusual April… but the average temperature in Spain has risen 1.69 °C between 1961 and 2024 and heat waves last three days per decade. That is, the “outside the norm” in this case It means things are changing. and what we are going to experience (the passage from the 36 to the flood) is the new normal. Image | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | In two days, AEMET is clear that spring is suspended: an “early summer” arrives in Spain

While most citizens pay the electricity bill, electricity pays Amancio Ortega: 49.2 million in dividends

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There are people who pay electricity bill every monthand people who are paid by “the light”. Amancio Ortega belongs, without a doubt, to the second group. The founder of Inditex will earn 49.2 million euros this year in dividends from three energy companies in which it has participation: Enagás, Redeia and the Portuguese REN (National Energy Networks). Despite being a considerable sum in terms of dividends, those 50 million euros seem like pocket change when compared to the amounts of its large business, 3,234 million euros that will receive from Inditex in 2026 for 59% of the shares it controls through its investment instruments Pontegadea and Partler 2006. Redeia: the largest energy check. Ortega’s most profitable participation, in terms of dividends, within the energy sector It is the one that the millionaire maintains in Redeia, the company he manages the Spanish electrical network. Through his company Pontegadea Inversiones, the businessman settled in La Coruñaacquired 5% of the company’s capital in July 2021 for approximately 456 million euros. With this position, it is the second largest shareholder in the company, only behind the State, which owns 20% through SEPI. The Board of Directors of Redeia will propose to the General Meeting the distribution of a dividend of 0.80 euros per share charged to the 2025 results, of which 0.20 euros They were already paid in January and another 0.60 euros are planned as a complementary dividend in July. Taking into account Ortega’s percentage of participation, that means about 21.6 million euros for Pontegadea, the same amount as the previous year. Furthermore, the Redeia’s new strategic plan For the period 2026-2029, it foresees a dividend that the company describes as “growing and sustainable”, to reach 0.87 euros per share in 2029, which represents an annual increase of 2%. In this way, Pontegadea, as representative of Ortegawould receive about 91 million euros over the next four years. The Portuguese bet: REN. Ortega’s other great energy pillar in 2025 has been the Portuguese REN, the Portuguese equivalent of Redeia. Far from settling for its initial position, Pontegadea expanded its participation in REN last yearpurchasing an additional 1.7% until reaching 13.7% of the capital. With that move, Ortega consolidated his role as second largest shareholder of the Portuguese company, only behind the Chinese electricity company State Grid Corporation of China, which controls 25% of the shares. By 2025, the REN Board of Directors proposed distribute among its shareholders a total of 106,750,601.92 euros, which corresponds to a gross dividend of 0.160 euros per share. On this occasion, the payment has been divided into two: a dividend of 0.064 euros per share has already been distributed as an advance at the end of November 2025, while a second payment of 0.096 euros per share is expected after its approval at the general meeting scheduled for April 15, 2026. The part corresponding to Pontegadea for its 13.7% of the capital represents about 14.6 million euros in total, which They add to those of its Spanish counterpart. A commitment to energy diversification: Enagás. The third leg of the energy business of the founder of Inditex is Enagás, the company that manages the natural gas network in Spain. Pontegadea acquired 5% of its capital at the end of 2019, paying 281.63 million euros for that package. Today that participation is valued below the purchase price, but the difference has been compensated through the dividends collected over the years. The gas company maintains his remuneration one euro per share for this year, maintaining the containment plan that began in 2024 and will last until 2027. The dividend will be paid in two payments: one of 0.4 euros that was already paid in December 2025 and another of 0.6 euros scheduled for July 2, 2026, with a total distribution of 157.2 million euros among all its shareholders. Due to its percentage of participation, the part corresponding to Pontegadea exceeds 13 million euros. A long-term strategy. Ortega’s investment in the energy sector is not an opportunistic bet in a sector in times of economic prosperity. It is a strategy that he has been building since 2019, when he joined Enagás, and that was completed in 2021 with the entry into Redeia and REN. To this we must add the alliances that has signed with Repsol to participate in renewable energy portfolios: wind farms in Aragón and Castilla y León, and solar plants in Albacete and Cádiz, among other assets. The Pontegadea model does not consist of investments by distribution companies, but rather in companies that manage infrastructure energy companies, which offer regulated and stable income with recurring dividends year after year. They are not high risk investments nor high speculative volatilitybut in strategic sectors independently of the economic cycle. In Xataka | There is a 50-ton “nuclear reactor” in a bunker in Fuenlabrada: it has been donated by Amancio Ortega Image | Pexels (Jan Kopriva), GTRES

The bill is 45,000 euros and two lost trials

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When a traffic light stops working there are road rules that we must follow until it is repaired. The worst thing is when this repair takes several days, causing chaos in traffic. That was what happened in 2023 in Valencia, and the dispute between the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) and the maintenance company remained unresolved until a few days ago. What happened. For five days in November 2023, the pedestrian traffic light located on Doctor Manuel Candela Avenue with Santos Justo y Pastor Street showed the red light and the green light at the same time. According to they count From El Motor, the first alert was registered on November 14 at 6:45 in the morning. Four days later, a municipal inspection confirmed that the problem remained unresolved. Why did it take so long? The origin of the failure, according to the Valencia City Council, was that the company that had to take charge replaced the burned out halogen lamps. for other LED types with E27 socket. Municipal services described them as “glaringly unsuitable for traffic light networks.” The problem, furthermore, was not only the type of bulb that was used, but the technical procedure they followed to install them. A procedure that municipal reports described as “technically inappropriate.” blegal attack. The City Council imposed a penalty of 45,000 euros on Electronic Trafic SA, the company awarded the contract. The company appealed, arguing that it had resolved two different breakdowns, both in less than two hours, and that the council had “deliberately” confused the terms breakdown and incident, which would entail different economic implications depending on the contract. He also alleged “animosity” from the head of the Mobility Service towards the company. The courts did not see it that way. What the judges said. The TSJCV confirmed the sanction on February 26, supporting the City Council’s thesis. The sentence highlights “the seriousness of the behavior followed by the contractor”, which left the incident unresolved for more than four days at an intersection where there is special traffic. The court highlighted that the municipal reports were “highly precise and exhaustive” and that the company did not provide sufficient technical evidence to refute them. According to point The Motor, in addition to the 45,000 euros, the company must pay 2,500 euros in procedural costs. What this sentence implies. The issue here is that the company notified of the problem but the traffic light continued not to work correctly during those days. Therefore, the city council insist in which the responsibility falls on the company, from notification to solution. The failure being a traffic light, a critical road safety device, all the more so the urgency of finding a solution. More and more cities are outsourcing intelligent traffic management to private companies, and the ruling certainly sets a precedent. What happens now? The crossing operates normally. The ruling still allows for an appeal, although the fact that two different courts have endorsed the city council’s position means that the company has little room for maneuver. Cover image | Georgi Zvezdov In Xataka | We already have the VAT discount at the pump: now the battle begins to prevent gas stations from absorbing it

Data centers have made the electricity bill more expensive in the US. And the Government has said enough

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Every time you ask a generative AI to solve a problem for you, a server on the other side of the world needs power to process it and cooling to keep from melting down. The problem is that this electricity meter that spins at full speed is not just that of the large technology companies: it is that of the entire community. The AI ​​revolution has a real physical and economic cost that has already begun to hit the pockets of families, unleashing a crisis that has forced the United States Government itself to hit the table. The US government has said enough. According to federal dataresidential electricity prices will increase a national average of 6% in 2025. Citizens, stifled by the cost of living, have begun to connect the dots and point to the huge data centers that are proliferating in their neighborhoods. As detailed Politicalthere are currently some 680 data centers planned in the country, gigantic infrastructures that will require energy equivalent to that of 186 large nuclear power plants. This brutal demand has provoked strong citizen opposition, how to explain Guardiannumerous communities have begun to reject and block these projects for fear that their bills will skyrocket. The pressure has been so strong that the rebellion has penetrated traditionally conservative fiefdoms. According to Financial TimesRepublican legislators in states such as Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma have suggested halting the construction of data centers, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pushed laws to regulate them and protect families from price increases. Faced with this scenario, Donald Trump’s administration has been forced to intervene. Washington’s “historical pact.” As reported The New York Timesexecutives from Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI made the pilgrimage to Washington to meet with President Trump and sign the so-called “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” (Ratepayer Protection Pledge). The objective of the agreement is to shield consumers from rising electricity costs. Technology companies have committed to “build, provide or buy” the new electricity generation resources they need, assuming 100% of the costs of infrastructure and improvements to the transmission network. During the meeting, Trump left a phrase that perfectly summarizes the sector’s reputation crisis: “They need help with public relations, because people think that if a data center is installed, the price of electricity will go up.” The president assured that, thanks to the pact, that “will no longer happen.” For their part, managers such as Ruth Porat (Google) or Dina Powell McCormick (Meta) confirmed their commitment to pay for the infrastructure “whether or not they end up using that energy.” according to statements published by the New York media. We cannot understand this move by Washington without looking at the electoral calendar. Politically, as they point out Financial TimesRepublican strategists alerted the White House that energy inflation was an imminent risk ahead of the midterm congressional elections (midterms). The Democrats, like Senator Mark Kellywere already using citizen anger as a political weapon, calling Trump’s pact a simple “handshake agreement” that was insufficient. And the clash with reality: a network to the limit. On paper, the promise sounds perfect. As the specialized media ironically says Engadget“big tech agrees not to ruin your electricity bill.” However, journalism and energy sector experts agree that there is a gigantic distance from words to actions. As he warns Political, The agreement is, in essence, a voluntary “handshake”, without binding legal force. Rob Gramlich, former economic advisor cited by CNBCremember that the White House has no direct jurisdiction over this matter: the rules of the electric grid are decentralized and depend on the public service commissions of the 50 states. It is they, and not the federal government, who approve how costs are distributed. The damage in some areas has already been done. Argus Media reports that on the PJM network —the largest in the US, covering 13 states and including the world’s largest data center cluster in Virginia—capacity costs have skyrocketed by $23 billion, record rates that are locked in until 2028, making it “virtually impossible” to lower prices for consumers in the short term. An independent watchdog came to describe this situation as a “massive transfer of wealth” from citizens to corporations. Competition for resources is fierce. Abe Silverman, researcher at Johns Hopkins University cited by Politicalcompares the situation to “a bidding war for a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.” There is a five-year waiting list for gas turbines, and their prices have doubled. This technological urgency not only makes the network more expensive, but is stopping the green transition in its tracks. As they explain Argus Mediathe immense demand for servers cannot be covered quickly enough with renewable sources. This is forcing power companies to delay the closure of polluting coal plants and invest heavily in natural gas generation, perpetuating dependence on fossil fuels. The greatest risk, Silverman warnsis what happens if Silicon Valley is wrong in its growth calculations: “You spend 3 billion to improve the network, and then the data center does not materialize (…) Who is left with the problem? Grandma.” Should Europe demand the same? If we cross the pond, the situation is no less worrying, and the regulatory approach is drastically different. According to data from the European Commissiondata centers currently consume 415 Terawatt-hours (TWh) globally (1.5% of the world total), a figure that, driven by AI, will double to 945 TWh in 2030. In the European Union, consumption was around 70 TWh in 2024 and will jump to 115 TWh by the end of the decade. Europe has launched a mandatory monitoring system under the Energy Efficiency Directive to demand transparency about this consumption and its water and carbon footprint. But in Spain, the problem is already a physical jam in the networks. As we have described in Xataka, The Spanish electrical grid is like a saturated highway to which, suddenly, “a convoy of trucks of industrial tonnage” has arrived. The technical regulations of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) caused a “cascade effect” that blocked connection permits. The … Read more

Your employees pay that bill every morning

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For decades, commuting to work in large Spanish cities had a clear logic: workers lived on the outskirts of large cities and They traveled every morning towards the center to their jobs. It was a fairly stable urban model, reinforced by transportation networks designed to take workers to the large office districts of the urban area. However, in recent years this pattern has been changing as the price of land in the center has skyrocketed and companies have also had to move to the periphery. As and as it portrays The Countrythe problem is that cities are not designed to move from periphery to periphery, and that movement has become in a daily mousetrap for millions of employees. Not even the companies can bear the prices of the center. In recent years, many companies have chosen to move their offices to peripheral areas where land is cheaper and there is space to build. large office complexes. This movement has made it possible to build huge business campuses that would be unviable in the urban centers of large cities with high demand for land such as Madrid or Barcelona. In Madrid, the north of the city has become one of the main destinations for this type of projects. An example is the Telephone Districtlocated in Las Tablas, which occupies about 22 hectares and concentrates more than 12,000 workers in a single business complex. The records of the Residence-Work Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid show that districts such as Fuencarral-El Pardo (where the Telefónica District is located) are already among the areas with the highest concentration of employment in the region. Barcelona experienced a similar process with the development of 22@ technological district in Poblenou, where numerous technology companies and corporate headquarters have been setting up shop in the last two decades. The transformation of this old industrial neighborhood created a new employment center outside the historic center of the city. Employment is moving, but so are prices. The problem with this migration of companies to the periphery of urban centers is that when thousands of workers begin to concentrate in a specific area, the real estate market usually reacts quickly. Proximity to work centers increases the value of nearby neighborhoods, which ends up raising rental and housing prices. This increase, in turn, forces employees to move to municipalities even further away from the city center and the offices where they work. The result is a constant increase in daily trips within the metropolitan area. In Madrid this phenomenon is reflected in the labor mobility figures. According to the recorded data According to the Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid, every day 1.2 million people enter the capital from other municipalities to work, compared to the 790,000 who did so in 2016. Something similar is happening in the city of Barcelona, which after the growth of 22@ has attracted workers from numerous municipalities in the metropolitan area, congesting the northern and southern access roads and the city’s ring roads due to the traffic generated by these employees at peak times, such as and how collect traffic congestion report of Inrix of 2025. Transportation takes you to the center, not to the periphery. All these congestion problems have their origin in the fact that the large transport infrastructures (metros, trams, Cercanías, bus lines, etc.) of the large Spanish cities have been designed for decades with a radial structure. They were planned to connect the peripheral neighborhoods with the city center, which was where most of the employment was concentrated. When new business centers began to grow outside the center, that structure began to show its limitations. Many workers no longer need to go to the urban area, but rather travel between peripheral areas that are not directly connected by public transport. This requires long journeys or several transfers, something that often makes the car faster. Even if it means getting stuck every day on the way to work. Furthermore, public transportation in many cities has become a lottery with constant delays and breakdownswhich generates uncertainty when considering alternatives to the private car. The price: hundreds of hours lost. The increase in long trips to work and dependence on the car is clearly reflected in traffic data. According to the TomTom Traffic IndexMadrid registered an average congestion level of 38% in 2025, which is 3.6 percentage points more than the previous year. That level of traffic means that traveling 10 kilometers during rush hour can take about 34 and a half minutes, with average speeds close to 17.5 km/h. The report also estimates that Madrid drivers lose around 98 hours a year in traffic jams during rush hour. When daily journeys are long, the accumulated time can multiply and reach up to 500 hours per year per person lost in traffic jams. Barcelona faces a similar situationwith a level of congestion in its urban center and access roads of 41.1%, which is one of the highest figures in Europe. In Xataka | The worst traffic jam in history: two weeks, more than 100 kilometers and thousands of cars detained in China Image | Unsplash (Kathy)

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