Change

two plants in Portugal and Scotland are about to change that

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While there are renewable energies such as solar or wind that are accelerating decarbonization, there are others that remain a melon to be opened, such as wave drive. The potential of waves is enormous, as you well know. island countries like Japan and places known for how brave their coast is like Galicia. It is true that some installation already exists, such as Mutriku’sbut its size and performance is rather discreet. To take wave power to another level, you need technology reliable enough to create a large plant and someone external to attest to it. There is the fence comes down to two places and one company: Portugal and Scotland, both from the Swedish company CorPower Ocean. The invention. CorPower Ocean’s C4 power converter measures nine meters in diameter, 18 meters in height and about 100 tons in mass. Since 2023, it has been installed and operational in the testing phase four kilometers off the coast of Aguçadoura, in the north of Portugal, at a depth of 45 meters. The device has achieved a historic milestone for wave energy: its C4 has received the first prototype certificate from Det Norske Veritas, the world reference entity in offshore energy. What does this mean? In short: that the technology meets the requirements of resistance, reliability and safety. In addition to reviewing and approving the conceptual development, detailed engineering, structural resistance and fatigue analysis, manufacturing, assembly, dry testing, installation, the most striking thing is that they have approved its performance in storms with waves of up to 18.5 meters. Why it is important. Because wave energy has been the unfinished business of renewables for more than half a century, far behind in performance (and obviously, also in exploitation of others such as wind or solar). That an independent certifying entity has given the go-ahead means that the technology is ready to make the leap to commercial production in terms of performance and safety, which opens the door to materializing projects once the necessary investment arrives. Here is the crux of the matter: if the technology is reliable, it is easier to convince financial and investment entities that it is worth betting on it. Context. Since the first prototypes will be patented in 1981 by engineers Laithwaite and Salter, other states such as Japan, Spain and Italy They have tried it without much success: wave power is still stuck in the experimental phase without making the commercial leap. Among the problems they have to deal with is the unpredictability of the waves: there may be some, but they are variable in height, pace and direction. On the other hand, the harsh marine environment also does not help in the design and maintenance of the devices. In detail. Certification is not the final stage, but rather the beginning of its commercial implementation: CorPower is already preparing its first two commercial parks, in Portugal and Scotland, with the stated objective of placing wave energy as the third major renewable source next to wind and solar. If everything goes according to plan, they will come into operation between 2027 and 2029. At that time, wave energy will finally be able to contribute its grain of sand to the electrical grid. And the Swedish company does not stop there: its next C5 is already pending certification. Yes, but. What has been certified is a prototype, not a device already manufactured in series, which is the next necessary step to produce on a large scale. And older plants such as Mutriku in Gipuzkoa (in operation since 2011), demonstrate This energy produces much less electricity than expected compared to wind or solar (its efficiency is 11%), so it remains to be known if these new parks will meet expectations. In Xataka | Twelve years of work, three winters at sea and a 42-meter buoy: this is the Basque project that wants to convert waves into cheap electricity Xataka | For years, wave energy was the ugly duckling of renewables. AI and data centers have taken a turn More information and cover | CorPower Ocean

If your password is stolen, you change it. If they steal your face, you have no other choice

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Google launched yesterday a new way to regain access to your account when you lose your phone or computer. All you have to do is record a selfie video by turning your head in several directions, and then send it to Google servers and use it as biometric verification if you want to recover that lost access. What’s really interesting is not this launch, because Google is just the latest big technology company to join the trend. And that trend, although interesting on the one hand, is very, very disturbing on the other. Google and your face as a method to recover your account. In Google’s announcement, those responsible explain the system for scanning and sending that selfie video to its servers, and how this system will allow users to recover their account if they lose access to it. Privacy and security by flag. Google promises that they will keep that information encrypted and use it for other purposes unless you actively allow it. The option can also be used to log in to your account (as Microsoft has been doing for years with its Windows Hello technology), but it cannot be used in Workspace accounts, nor in child accounts or in accounts that are part of the Advanced Protection Program from Google, aimed at journalists, activists or businessmen with especially sensitive information. Meta already tried it and had to abandon it…. Facebook had a facial recognition system —the one that suggested tags of people in photos— and closed it in 2021 erasing more than a billion faces after pressure from regulators and privacy organizations. …to get it back again. In October 2024 They resurrected technologythis time to recover Facebook and Instagram accounts that had been hacked. In December 2025 they had already made it the standard recovery method, and Meta assures that has improved by more than 30% the recovery rate of hacked accounts in the US and Canada. A Trojan horse called “age verification”. If account recovery is a gateway to giving up our “face”, the other, much more widespread, is to protect minors. That excuse has served to promote facial recognition as a verification measure. In July 2025, Roblox He started asking for a selfie video. to teenagers ages 13 to 17 who would like to unlock unfiltered chat with their circle of “trusted friends.” The system, managed by the company Personestimate the age based on facial features, and if you are not sure ask for official identification. Discord and its troubled system. In February 2026, the company advertisement that its more than 200 million monthly users would have to verify their age with a facial scan or an official document. The announcement came a few months after uploading a hack which exposed some 70,000 user IDs, which generated a lot of skepticism and notable criticism to the initiative. Discord had to delay the rollout of the measure until the second half of 2026, and shortly after a user shared a way to cheat the system with a 3D avatar controlled with an Xbox or PlayStation controller. TikTok, in the spotlight. The platform combine the estimate with a behavior and activity system (videos watched, usage patterns) and another for verification by selfie or official document when the system suspects that a self-declared adult user is actually not one. From 2021 has several lawsuits like the one that recently occurred in Florida because according to the accusation, TikTok deliberately modified your age rating to bypass parental controls. The vetoes that, for example Australia imposed on minors to enter social networks have also driven these efforts, which TikTok rushed to implement. Risky intermediaries. On French porn sites like Xvideos, verification provider AgeGO (a Spanish company based in Barcelona) offers to verify age with a live selfie. An AI Forensics investigation discovered that this data was sent directly to Amazon Rekognition, AWS’s facial recognition service, along with the user’s IP and the information that they were accessing an adult website. It is a clear example how biometric data that theoretically serves to verify your age ends up being used to create user profiles that can violate your privacy. What changes with a leaked password. If your password is stolen, you can change it. But if your facial scan, generated from the selfie video with various angles, expressions or lighting, is filtered, you cannot change your face. That’s the fundamental difference between “something you know” and “something you are,” and it explains why regulators and privacy activists are very clear that biometric data represents a category of data with a very different sensitivity than any other personal data. Interesting and above all very disturbing. Each of these companies insists that the video selfies they allow users to take are used only for the proper purpose—recovering an account, verifying age—but the truth is that the option, while interesting, is disturbing. Although it presents a valid and even very attractive alternative to recover an account, the risks that this biometric identification imposes are enormous. The privacy scandals proposed by this type of system are already beginning to appear —Let them tell Meta and his smart glasses—. Added to all this the threat of deepfakes which the EU will try to mitigate with your AI Law. Image | Taan Huyn In Xataka | Instagram tried to generate images with AI from its users’ photos: now Meta has had to retract it

Carnival’s next megacruise will be huge. Your biggest change will be in how the sea will look

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A mega cruise can offer so many attractions that at times it’s easy to forget you’re sailing. Carnival aims to respond to this contradiction with the Carnival Destinya ship of enormous dimensions whose proposal will not be based solely on volume, capacity or the number of spaces on board. The shipping company wants its distinctive feature to be its relationship with the outside world. To achieve this, it has proposed an open architecture, with more glass surfaces, wide perspectives and areas designed to keep the ocean within the field of vision. Carnival Destiny will be the first member of the new Ace class, a family of three ships with deliveries scheduled for 2029, 2031 and 2033. Its construction formally began with the steel cutting ceremony at the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy, where a 3D hologram was also shown with the first preview of its design. Delivery is scheduled for summer 2029, after which she will sail to destinations in the Caribbean, Bahamas and Mexico. By size, the Destiny will enter directly into the highest category on the market. Its approximately 230,000 GT of gross tonnage and its capacity to around 8,000 passengers They will place it close to the largest cruise ships built, although it will not lead the classification by volume. Royal Caribbean’s Icon class ships, such as the Icon of the Seas and the most recent Legend of the Seasare around 250,800 GT and can accommodate around 7,600 passengers at full capacity. The new Carnival ship will therefore compete in that same league, but with a different proposal. A giant who does not want to hide the ocean Once its scale is located, the difference that the company wants to highlight appears in the design. Carnival has not yet presented a main attraction or a large thematic space that defines the ship, but rather a different way of organizing it around its relationship with the outside. The company describes it as the most outward-oriented megacruise ship on the market, a promotional claim it will yet have to prove. The intention, in any case, is clear: that the ocean functions as a constant reference and not as a secondary element. To materialize this idea, the project will use more than 18,200 m² of glass surfaces. Among the elements already announced there will be multi-story glass wallsmore open lines of sight and a greater presence of spaces facing the outside. It is not just about adding windows, but rather organizing part of the architecture to reduce visual obstacles and extend views across the ship. Carnival has not yet shown the complete design, so the real scope of that transformation remains to be known. This image shows Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas, not the future Carnival Destiny. Delivered in June 2026 as the third ship of the Icon class, it represents the current reference against which Carnival will place its new giant Another of the pillars will be in the cabins and on the outer decks. The company maintains that the Destiny will have an unprecedented number of accommodations with balconies and sea views, but has not published a figure to verify the scope of that claim. It will also redesign the Lanaian exterior cover designed to create a more continuous connection with the ocean. With this, the shipping company intends that this relationship does not depend solely on the large panoramic spaces. The changes will not end in the architecture, although the rest of the new features are still difficult to measure. According to Carnival, more than 70% of the spaces and attractions will respond to concepts that the brand has not used beforewith proposals planned for restaurants, bars, lounges, entertainment and outdoor areas. The figure is striking, but it is not yet accompanied by names, plans or detailed descriptions. Until these announcements arrive, it can only be stated that it is preparing a broad renewal of its offer, not that each proposal will be unprecedented in the sector. The Destiny proposal is based on a contradiction: the more cruise ships grow and the more activities they concentrate, the easier it is for the sea to be relegated to the background. Carnival will try to correct this with balconies, exterior routes, large glass surfaces and a layout designed to expand the views. The idea has already been defined, but it still remains to be seen how it will work on a ship prepared for around 8,000 passengers. Until 2029 we will not know if this architecture will really change the experience or if its greatest effect will remain in the promotional field. Images | carnival In Xataka | A technology created to avoid collisions at sea blows millionaires’ minds: it allows them to locate their yachts in seconds

OpenAI wants its own Alexa, but on steroids. Its first device seeks to change the relationship with AI, according to Bloomberg

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Home assistants have been operating for years around a simple logic: we give an order, the device executes a task and the relationship usually ends there. The bet that OpenAI would be working on aims precisely to break that limit and give artificial intelligence a more continuous role within the home. It wouldn’t just be about answering questions or activating services, but about learning from the user and offering help before they have to ask for it. The OpenAI device. According to BloombergOpenAI is working on a screenless home device, similar in general appearance to a speaker, but designed to be moved around the house thanks to a rechargeable battery. The company would like to make it the physical embodiment of ChatGPTcapable of responding to messages, playing content, controlling connected devices and helping with different tasks. It should be noted that the company has not presented it and there is no official information yet. Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief, is also behind the project. OpenAI paid $6.5 billion in 2025 for io Productsthe company he had co-founded, while his studio LoveFrom participates in the design of this new family of devices. The team also brings together numerous former Apple designers and engineers responsible for products like the iPhone and Mac, a concentration of talent that helps understand both the ambition of the project and the legal conflict surrounding it. Your own Alexa, but with another ambition. The entry of the firm led by Sam Altman in the home it would put it in front of Amazon, Google and Apple, companies that have been building their own ecosystems of speakers, assistants and connected devices for years. According to the aforementioned medium, the difference would be in a more personalized and proactive experience, capable of learning from the user and offering information without always waiting for an order. OpenAI would describe it internally not as a simple smart speaker, but as a computer conceived from the beginning to work with artificial intelligence. The difference would be in its ability to interpret what is happening around it using a camera, several sensors and more advanced models than those available in conventional home assistants. Instead of processing an isolated instruction, the system could take into account the environment and the specific moment to determine what information is useful and how to respond. New voice model. Much of that experience would depend on GPT-Livea more advanced version of ChatGPT’s voice mode that OpenAI launched in July 2026. The idea is that you can listen and speak at the same time, adapting more naturally during conversations and processing information quickly. The device would also incorporate mechanical elements capable of moving on their own. With this, the company would try to reinforce the personality of the device and generate the feeling that “it is alive.” To anticipate, you will have to know us. OpenAI would like the device to become a kind of expert on its user over time, capable of identifying what information may be useful at any given moment. Bloomberg notes that to achieve this, it could turn to personal information, such as emails, and use it to better understand its owner. This personalization would be one of its main arguments, but it would also force us to decide to what extent we are willing to open our digital lives. Apple’s lawsuit. The project is also moving forward under pressure from a Apple lawsuitwhich accuses OpenAI of having used trade secrets to accelerate the development of its devices. OpenAI maintains that it knows of no evidence to support those accusations, although Apple has requested a court order that could delay its commercialization. According to Bloomberg, the company aims to present the product during 2026 and launch it in 2027, as long as the technical and legal process allows it. The final bet is to turn ChatGPT into a physical presence that we live with daily. Images | OpenAI/LoveFrom In Xataka | Alexa+ arrives in Spain with the ambition of understanding real conversations: we have seen it in action and everything changes there

Volkswagen led an army of sheep to graze under 31,000 solar panels. It turns out that the way of producing energy began to change

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For years, the industry has assumed that each new problem required an increasingly sophisticated solution. Volkswagen just demonstrated which is not always like that. After deploying thousands of solar panels to power one of its factories, it has discovered that the best possible maintenance is not done by a robot or a specialized machine, but by a flock of sheep. The problem was not the plates, but what was underneath. Photovoltaic parks share a challenge that is as simple as it is constant: vegetation doesn’t stop growing. In industrial facilities with tens of thousands of panels, keeping the ground clear involves introducing machinery between metal supports, wiring and electrical equipment, with the consequent economic, energy and maintenance costs. In the Volkswagen plant in Poznań, Poland, where a solar park of 31,000 panels can cover the entire energy demand of the factory during the days of greatest radiation and provides about 25% of its annual consumption, that challenge had become part of daily operations. An ancient solution. Instead of looking for a more efficient machine, Volkswagen turned to a much older technology: a hundred sheep. The animals replace lawnmowers, eliminating the need for mechanical clearing as they calmly cover the terrain under the plates. The curious thing is that the solution is not only effective in maintaining the grass at baybut it avoids the constant passage of vehicles between the infrastructure, reduces emissions and simplifies the maintenance of a state-of-the-art energy installation. The plus that sheep give. The project is part of a known model like agrivoltaicswhich seeks to combine electricity production with agricultural activity on the same surface. Under the supervision of researchers from the Poznań University of Sciences, the flock has been turned into a real open-air laboratory. The scientists analyze how it influences grazing on biodiversity, soil quality, vegetation, microclimate and animal well-being, while studying the extent to which the shade projected by the panels reduces the thermal stress of livestock during the hottest months. Nature also optimizes. The first results show an adaptation surprisingly fast. The sheep have been distributed naturally throughout the facility, forming small groups that take advantage of the shaded areas generated by the solar panels. This behavior, in addition to indicating that the animals feel safe, helps maintain a uniform plant coverage and encourages the appearance of insects and other species, transforming a simple photovoltaic plant into a much richer ecosystem than conventionally mowed land. Agrivoltaics is no longer rare. Although the case of Volkswagen is especially striking because it is a large industrial facility, the use of sheep in solar parks takes vyears extending in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. The idea it’s simple: obtain two different yields from the same plot. While the plates generate electricity, the agricultural or livestock activity keeps the land productive, reduces operating costs and improves the environmental performance of the facility without competing for the use of the land. Innovation is not always more technology. The paradox of the project is evident. A factory that is committed to electrification, solar energy and decarbonization has ended up finding one of its most effective solutions in a livestock practice with thousands of years of history. At a time when innovation is often associated with artificial intelligence, automation or robotics, Volkswagen has discovered that, sometimes, the greatest advance consists of simply letting innovation. nature do a job that no machine can do with the same efficiency. Image | Rafal Pijanski In Xataka | Australia compared 1,700 sheep and discovered something unexpected: those that graze among solar panels give better quality wool In Xataka | Texas installed millions of solar panels on rural land. To maintain it they have had to hire 3,000 sheep

This is the variant of the N-320 that promises to change Cuatro Caminos

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Passing through Cuatro Caminos at rush hour is an experience that, if you can avoid it, the better. The problem is that the people who cross its road every day have been waiting for decades for a solution that does not come. The good news is that the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility has approved provisionally the informative study of the Guadalajara bypass and the conditioning of the N-320 highway. An administrative step with which the Ministry hopes to soon relieve traffic in one of the most saturated accesses of the capital of Alcarreña. What has been approved. The document contemplates works for an estimated amount of 103.7 million euros, VAT included, as reported by the Ministry itself. Of course, it should be noted that the provisional approval is not the only thing that remains, as can be expected, since the next procedure will be the release of the project to public information in the Official State Gazette (BOE). What the project consists of. The works will be divided into three main actions: The first is the Guadalajara variant itself, 6,626.55 meters long, which will run from kilometer 269.480 of the N-320 to the Cabanillas del Campo junction with the A-2. Of the four alternatives that have been studied, the Ministry has finally opted for this route, somewhat shorter than the other options. The second action is the splitting of the N-320 between kilometers 290.02 and 295.68, a section that will become a highway. And the third is a new Eastern connection, by conventional road, between the Fuente la Niña junction, on the A-2, and the existing link between the N-320 and the N-320A. Added to all this are several new links and the remodeling of others, including the crossing of the variant with the N-320 itself and the semi-link with the CM-2004. relief for Four Paths. The Cuatro Caminos roundabout is, according to has recognized on several occasions the City Hall itself, one of the most critical points in terms of traffic in the entire city. In March 2023, when the study was presented for the first time by the then mayor, Alberto Rojo, together with the Secretary General of Infrastructure, Xavier Flores, it was explained that the set of actions linked to the N-320 (including the South and East roads) could reduce traffic pressure on that junction by up to 50%, according to Nueva Alcarria. The variant does not solve the problem of Cuatro Caminos by itself, but it would remove from that point a considerable part of the through traffic that today crosses it. ccriticism from the City Council. Not everyone in Guadalajara has received the news with the same enthusiasm. And the second deputy mayor, Alfonso Esteban, has asked to the Government to definitively expedite the processing and recalled that the Ministry submitted this same study to public information already in February 2023, then committing to approve it that same year. “Three years later, the only known news is the provisional approval of the aforementioned document, it has been three lost years,” declared Esteban. The mayor has insisted that this provisional approval does not imply the start of the works, since there are still procedures such as a new public information period, the Environmental Impact Declaration, the final approval of the study, the drafting of the construction project and the issue of its budgets. Four Paths, a separate debate. The Town Hall maintains that the variant and the solution for Cuatro Caminos are two related but different issues. As declared by the City Council in November 2024 to the State Highway Demarcation, the definitive solution for this junction involves the total or partial burying of traffic, while “any other action would be provisional,” the City Council itself states. Esteban explained that a system of elevated pedestrian walkways was discarded due to lack of consensus between the institutions involved, due to accessibility and safety problems, and that the General Directorate of Traffic proposed as a provisional alternative to place traffic lights on pedestrian crossings and accessibility improvements. Cover image | Ministry of Transport and Asqueladd (Wikimedia Commons) In Xataka | “We have six kilometers that have melted due to the heat”: in the face of extreme temperatures, France needs to Spanishize its roads

Climate change has a lethal side effect that we are only just discovering: it locks us in the house and prevents us from moving

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The increasingly frequent heat waves are not harmless for the population as they cause thousands of deaths each year, with vulnerable people being the most affected by this unwanted effect. But beyond this, which is what impacts anyone the most, we are also seeing how the increase in temperature is causing let’s reduce our physical activitysince when the street becomes an oven, sedentary lifestyle skyrockets. It is studied. The first major published work In this regard, he appeared on the scene in March of this same year and analyzed data from 156 countries collected between 2000 and 2022 to identify the “thermal frontier” in which our behavior changes radically from having good physical activity to moving to a sedentary lifestyle. With all this data, the limit was placed at 27.8ºC average temperature, since, according to the study, for each additional month in which a country exceeds this average temperature, global physical inactivity increases 1.5 percentage points. And it is not a simple summer anecdote, but stopping walking, running, cycling to work or playing in the park has direct physiological consequences. In Xataka The El Niño numbers are so strong that they are beginning to make half the world nervous. We have to be able to differentiate risk from hysteria Looking to the future, The figures are chilling, since if we continue with the current trend in an inactive manner, physical inactivity caused exclusively by excess heat will cause between 470,000 and 700,000 premature deaths additional each year around the world. Added to this is the economic impact, since lower productivity and increased medical spending will mean annual losses of between 2,400 and 3,680 million dollars. Spain, Due to its geographical location and its tendency towards desertification, it has been identified as one of the European countries most affected by this phenomenon, along with critical regions such as Central America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Because? To understand the reasons that reach these extremes, we have to look at another study that analyzed 74 years of hourly data, combining temperature and humidity to coin the concept ‘limiting heat’. With this term we talk about those environmental conditions in which the human body cannot carry out physical activity outdoors without its core temperature reaching dangerous levels. The most alarming thing about the study is the speed at which we are losing “working” hours per year. The annual time we spend in conditions of “severe livability limitation” has doubled since the 1950s, and it is not something that affects only the elderly. It affects us all. In young adults, historically there were about 25 hours a year of heat so extreme that it prevented them from moving safely. But today that figure has shot up to 50 hours annually and continues to increase. In the case of those over 65 years of age, their tolerance threshold is lower and they have gone from suffering 600 hours of climate confinement per year to more than 900 hours per year. This means that they spend more than 10% of the year in restrictive environmental conditions. In Xataka The map that splits Europe into two when the heat arrives: where there is air conditioning and where there isn’t He pushes us to the couch. The WHO itself has been warning that climate change acts as a “threat multiplier.” Here we have the perfect example, since heat not only makes us directly sick, but also enhances other modern pandemics such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes by promoting a sedentary lifestyle. The solution is not just to tell people “go out and do sports earlier” or “join a gym with air conditioning.” Pass byrethink citiessince if the streets do not have shade, if the parks are cement slabs without climatic shelters, and if urban planning does not adapt to the new temperatures, going for a walk will cease to be a medical recommendation and will become a risky sport for four months a year. In Xataka | The networks are filling up with maps that promise the end of the heat. One thing is what we would like and another, very different, is what we know (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Climate change has a lethal side effect that we are only just discovering: it locks us in the house and prevents us from moving was originally published in Xataka by José A. Lizana .

How to change your doctor to choose another depending on your autonomous community

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Let’s explain to you how to change your GP through the Internet, and without having to do any in-person procedures. This way, if you are not satisfied with the attention that the professional assigned to you is giving you, you can make a change. The process depends on each autonomous community. Some will allow you to do everything online, and in others you will simply have a page explaining the necessary documentation and how to make an appointment to make the request in person. This procedure is called Right to free choiceand all autonomous communities allow it to be done. Of course, in almost all of them it is a purely in-person procedure, although some already allow it to be done online. Change doctors in each autonomous community Let’s tell you the links for the doctor change process that each autonomous community has available. Thus, depending on where you live, you will know the page where you have to make the change. On the pages where you can complete the procedure online, the first thing will be to identify yourself using a digital certificatelike the FNMT certificateor alternatively be registered in the Cl@ve system. Then, each page will guide you through the steps you need to take. And on the pages where there is no online procedure, what you have is information about everything you need to be able to do it in person. You will be told the requirements, where to go and the papers you must provide. In Xataka Basics | News about My Citizen Folder: everything new you can do after its March 2026 update

“In Spain we are not immune to the effects of climate change, we need to intensify conservation”

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Europe has lived an inconceivable heat wave until very recently beyond the Pyrenees and the consequences have been dire. France attributes heat as the main cause of more than 1,000 deaths and in the windows they have come to see thermal blankets to reflect the sun’s rays and reduce the temperature in homes that lack air conditioning. The consequences today have been devastating in much of Europe. Melting roads and trams that drag the materials that stick their tracks to the ground. Firefighters who water the bridges so that the steel does not fracture. Trains canceled because the temperature was too high inside. The situation has been so dramatic that more than half of Europe is already looking south. Portugal, Spain and Italy are now the benchmarks when it comes to building new infrastructures, aware north of our borders that these episodes of extreme heat will be more and more recurrent. But Spain doesn’t have it that easy either. Although we have obvious experience in dealing with extreme heat when building our infrastructure, our country also has to remain alert to other episodes of climate change. Although in recent days the discourse has become popular on social networks that Spain has many lessons to teach northern Europe, the truth is that we have our own problems. “We share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe,” he warns us. Cesar Francopresident of General Council of Industrial Engineers and director of master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the UAX. Our own challenges While the videos accumulated, the morality lessons piled up on social networks in southern Europe. If you have entered spaces like Or that their infrastructures do not have expansion joints. “It is an inaccurate statement. Joints exist and are essential in bridges, viaducts and concrete structures throughout Europe”, assures César Franco who points out that, in addition, “the use of Via Seamless (continuous welded rail) is an international standard” and is also used in Spain. “The difference is in the calculations. In central and northern Europe, resistance to extreme cold, frost, freeze-thaw cycles and the use of melting salts have historically been prioritized. Now facing prolonged heat waves with records typical of Mediterranean latitudes, the materials and neutralization temperatures of their pathways are subjected to compression stresses outside their historical design ranges,” explains the president of the Council of Industrial Engineers. The question, therefore, is not not knowing how to build an infrastructure, the question is what climatological effects they face. “Today, climate design is no longer limited to the asphalt-steel binomial. The real challenge is the concurrent risk. In addition to the heat, Spain must face episodes of torrential rain, DANA, storms, floods and associated geotechnical phenomena. This forces engineering to focus on general geotechnical stability: the behavior of the slopes, the capacity of drainage works to avoid scours on bridges, and the monitoring of clearings to prevent landslides that interrupt circulation,” explains Franco about our country. That is, while Europe now has problems with extreme summer heat, Spain must be careful with cycles of strong and recurring rainssomething for which, as we found just a few months ago, we are not prepared. “We have very robust regulatory and technical know-how in high temperature scenarios, but we share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe,” the General Council of Industrial Engineers emphasize. And the temperature can dilate the tracks of a train until causing the so-called “lateral buckling”. It is not, they explain to us, a structural failure, it is really “a collapse due to elastic instability of the entire system (track-fastening-sleeper-ballast).” The asphalt binder can also lose this stability, which “if it exceeds its softening temperature, it loses viscosity. The mixture loses rigidity and resistance to deformation, and under heavy traffic ruts, undulations or exudations (sticky surfaces) may appear,” explains César Franco. We do not have these problems in Spain because we are adapted to them, but the General Council of Industrial Engineers warns: “We have very robust regulatory and technical know-how in high temperature scenarios, but we share the same resilience challenges as the rest of Europe. Our network faces challenges linked to the aging of assets and the need to intensify preventive conservation. Spain’s advantage is the experience in the behavior of materials under heat; the common European challenge is the financing and speed of adaptation of existing networks to the new climatic normality”. And Spain and Europe face the same problem. Both have to find ways to make their infrastructure suitable during extreme weather events for which they were not designed. The European Union, César Franco reminds us, “requires that the main networks be fully operational and resilient against natural risks with horizons to 2030, 2040 and 2050” but the problem is that, everything indicates, we are not moving fast enough. Photo | Julian Hochgesang and General Council of Industrial Engineers In Xataka | AEMET asks that we prepare because “starting on Friday” a rise is expected that will put Spain “eight degrees above normal”

Samsung is ahead of the presentation of the Galaxy Z Fold8 by showing the design change of the foldable. At last

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There are a few days left to see Samsung’s new folding phones, but the South Korean company has decided that the speculation is over. In a series of videos, they have begun to show what the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 will be like, but they have done so in a rather peculiar way. Instead of showing the design like others do (Google with the Pixel before presentations, for example), they have decided indirectly show the most important change of the new folding: the form factor. With phrases like “A new way” and strange videos, Samsung makes one thing clear: we must welcome passport-style foldables. As a curiosity, one of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and the foldable iPhone It seems like they will have quite a bit in common. And I say “one of the Galaxy Fold” because everything indicates that we will have two versions: the true successor of the Galaxy Z Fold7 and the one who for a time It was known as Galaxy Fold Wide. The design change of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Of all the videos that Samsung has shared, there are three in which this idea of ​​design change is clearly explored. From a traditional elongated format since the first Fold, it seems that we will move to a more square one both when the mobile is folded and when we unfold it. There are three videos that show this design change and they are quite revealing: There is another one cutting out a photo and another in which instead of a puzzle it is a chocolate bar. As I say, the three explore the idea that we are preparing the body for a design change, and the leaks have not been long in coming. While it is expected that there will be a Galaxy Z Fold8 with an elongated format (surnamed Ultra, perhaps), these Samsung videos seem to confirm that we will have a simply squarer Fold8. The leaks talk about a mobile phone with a 7.6-inch interior screen with a more square aspect ratio of 4:3. The external screen will be compact, with 5.5 inches and a 16:10 aspect ratio. To get an idea, the Fold7 had a 6.5-inch external screen with an 8-inch internal one with aspect ratios of 21:9 and 6:5 respectively. The translation is that the Galaxy Z Fold8 will be much more compact when closed, and when opened, it will practically be square. Very similar, as we say, to a passport. What has been leaking about the supposed iPhone Fold (or whatever it ends up being called) is very similar, with a more compact format that would share lines with Samsung’s. Obviously, neither one nor the other has been presented, so this is all speculation, but what we do know is that, in 2025, Apple chose to Samsung as the supplier of flexible OLED panels for its foldable iPhone. Thus, and as happened when the iPhone made the leap to OLED screens, there will be two competing mobile phones that will have the same screens and the changes will be calibration between one brand and another. It makes perfect sense for Samsung to take advantage of the fact that it has developed a panel with a new aspect ratio for Apple to create a third foldable (the other would be the Flip) that would mount that panel to compete, directly, against its historic great rival. In the end, it will be up to the consumer to decide whether they prefer Android or iOS, but they will have to choose two foldables with a very similar (if not identical) form factor. And it seems like a change that makes complete sense to me. ‘Passport’ foldables = the best foldables Now, this design is not new and, in fact, has been in place for years. In Spain, the book-type foldables that are most seen are those that share a form factor with Samsung’s: elongated when folded, small tablets when we open them. They are not the most comfortable to use with one hand when they are folded and we are walking down the street, really. It’s not official, but this is supposedly what the iPhone Fold will be like But then there are the Pixel Fold with an external aspect ratio of 17.4:9 or my favorite of all foldables: the Oppo Find N. The screen of the latter is 5.49 inches 18:9, and they are form factors more similar to what these two new folding devices from Samsung and Apple are estimated to have. The translation is that using a mobile phone like the Oppo Find N on the street is extremely comfortable because, in practice, It is as if it were a compact mobile. In fact, if the leak that the external screen will be 5.5 inches is true, we would be talking about diagonals that we have not usually seen for years, when the Zenfone 10 With its less than 6 inches it was considered a compact mobile. It’s already a few years old, but if you want to imagine what this new batch of foldables will more or less be like, take a look at the video we published about the Oppo Find N: That one-handed operation was the detail that we highlighted the most at the time and what represents a real change compared to the rest of the foldables on the market because we still have a large screen when opening it, but if we don’t want to do so, we have a very manageable external one in which the thumb covers the entire diagonal with ease. Now, will the market accept that design? In the case of Samsung, if the rumors are true, the consumer will have three options to choose between the Flip and the Square Fold8 and the more traditional Fold8 Ultrabut in the case of the iPhone, Apple will only have one bullet. In any case, as we have already mentioned, they are rumors (especially in the case of the … Read more

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