deal

deal with the websites of the Spanish administration

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Claude’s latest upgrade isn’t advertised as “smarter”: it’s advertised as an acting agent. Sonnet 4.6 Not only does he reason, he also navigates websites, fills out forms and completes procedures with the mouse and keyboard, just like a person would do. It’s a quantum leap in what AI can do for you, not to you. The demonstration chosen by Anthropic It was a great example: a user renewing his car registration on the website of the American equivalent of the DGT. It seems like a simple, functional and well-designed website. We want to see how it would go with the Electronic Headquarters of the Tax Agency. The context. Claude had already taken a big leap this month with the arrival of Opus 4.6 just two weeks ago. Sonnet 4.6 is the intermediate version, the one used by most users, including those on the free plan, and Anthropic has transformed it into more than just an improved chatbot: its OSWorld scores, the benchmark standard for measuring computer use by AI, have grown steadily for sixteen months. The company claims that tasks that previously required its most powerful model (Opus 4.5 and 4.6) are now solved by Sonnet 4.6, at the same price as always. Between the lines. There is a very clear market strategy here. Anthropic just closed a $30 billion round and aired its first ad in the Super Bowl, taking a dig at OpenAI. Now it democratizes agentic capabilities in its free plan. The objective is not only to attract developers: it is to reach the average user and change their daily relationship with AI. When chatbots started to have memory, our way of interacting with them changed. They went from tools to relationships. When they start doing things for us for real, like booking appointments, filling out forms or managing hellish paperwork, the change will be of a different magnitude. Yes, but. The technical and cultural challenge is enormous. AI that navigates computers is vulnerable to attacks of prompt injection– Malicious instructions hidden in web pages that can hijack the agent. Anthropic has improved the resistance of Sonnet 4.6 at this point, but the issue is not resolved. And that is without entering the ecosystem of European government websites, where the user experience already represents a challenge for us humans. The big question. When does a brutal demo stop being a brutal demo and become something that anyone uses to manage their tax return? That distance, between the promise of the agent and the reality of the digital bureaucracy, is where the real game is going to be played, beyond the hype. In Xataka | What is Claude Cowork, how it works, and what things you can do with this AI assistant on your computer Featured image | Anthropic, Xataka

TCL will make Sony’s next TVs in a deal to confront a common enemy: Samsung and LG

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If you have felt an earthquake and you don’t know where it is coming from, the easiest thing is for it to come from Japan. Specifically, from the headquarters of a Sony that has been associated with excellence in image quality for decades and that ends of ceding control of its Bravia brand to the Chinese company TCL. Since the time of Trinitron technology (so currently sought after to play on retro consoles) until Wega and the current Bravia, the Japanese giant had earned a deserved space in the premium range. They did not manufacture their panels (they bought them from Samsung and LG), but they did fine-tune them to offer very purist cinematic experiences. On the other side of the pond, in China, TCL has grown in recent years until it became one of the largest panel manufacturing companies. Now, China and Japan are joining their paths thanks to a joint venture that will take advantage of “the high-quality audio and image technology that Sony has cultivated over the years.” And the accounts are favorable for TCL: while the Chinese will control 51% of the joint-venture, the Japanese will keep 49%. It makes… quite a bit of sense. Movement that sounds more like a win-win than a retreat Although Sony televisions have extremely high-quality panels and modes that are very suitable for both movies and, above all, for video games in conjunction with a PlayStation 5the market has become increasingly complicated. Sony’s brand value and its name make its televisions more expensive than those of the competition, and that competition (led by Samsung or LG), is tighter than ever thanks to its OLED and QD-OLED technology. TCL is not far behind. After a huge investment in plants within China, the company has specialized in manufacturing Gen 10.5 panels. This implies that they have an enormous production capacity, which in practice translates into an ability like few others to flood the market with large-inch televisions at rock-bottom prices. That’s where this joint venture makes perfect sense. In its statement, Sony has confirmed that the company will operate globally and carry out the entire process: development, design, manufacturing, logistics, sales and customer service for both televisions and home audio equipment. We believe this strategic partnership with Sony represents a unique opportunity to combine the strengths of Sony and TCL – Du Juan, President of TCL Electronics That name of ‘Sony’ and ‘Bravia’ is a perfect opportunity for a TCL that will see how it can operate a brand of international prestige. For its part, Sony gains muscle that it did not have until now thanks to the most powerful companies when it comes to producing large-scale panels. Of course, apart from that 51% over Sony’s 49%, and the possibility of using its name, TCL gains something else: penetration in Japan, a protectionist market that prioritizes Japanese brands, especially against arrivals from China. The Japanese company has commented that it will be at the end of 2026 when the binding agreements between the two will be closed in order to begin operations in April 2027. And although this is an interesting operation as a whole, TCL is the clear winner: it gains premium credibility without having to build it from scratch, while Sony dilutes precisely what made its brand valuable. Images | TCL, Xataka In Xataka | The next big chip crisis is beginning. And this time copper and water are responsible.

The real deal about festivals isn’t the music, it’s that you can’t bring your own food in. But that’s over

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The sentence of Valencia Court against Madrid Salvaje It’s not just about snacks. It is an assault won by consumers in a larger war: that of maintaining cultural experiences without every moment being designed for the purchase and sale of services. A ray of hope in the battle between “leisure as a business” as opposed to “leisure as a social right” that defines our era in an increasingly clear way. The battle for free entertainment. The judgmentwhich comes after the lawsuit from FACUA-Consumers in Action, is the first judicial resolution in Spain which establishes the abusive nature of these prohibitions at music festivals. But its importance transcends the anecdotal, since what is at stake is not only the right to bring a sandwich to a concert, but something more structural: the battle to maintain cultural spaces that are not completely immersed in transactional dynamics. A chronology of victories. A series of rulings can be traced that serve as a preamble to this latest judicial decision and that have paved the way to reach this point. For example, in 2001the María Cristina multiplexes in Toledo lost a lawsuit that certified that prohibiting entry with external products was an “irrational restriction on the consumer’s ability to choose.” There was already talk of “tied sales”: indirectly imposing services that the client had not requested. In 2022 another milestone arrived: the law was enacted that requires all hospitality establishments to offer free tap water. Although the official justification was environmental (reducing single-use packaging), it also served as a basis for this issue of forced consumption. Since then, the fines have increased: Yelmo Cines, for example, was fined 30,001 euros by the Basque Consumer Institute for prohibiting food from abroad. Spanish legal doctrine already makes it clear: if the main activity is showing films or scheduling concerts, hospitality is accessory. Beyond the sandwich. What happens at festivals is a symptom of a deeper mutation: leisure is being colonized by logic that transforms the cultural experience into a financial asset. It is understood if we look at the case of Live Nation, owners of Ticketmaster. In 2024, US Attorney General Merrick Garland defined like this the business model: “Live Nation uses illegal anti-competitive conduct to exert monopolistic control over the live events industry at the expense of fans, artists, small promoters and venue operators.” That is: you control the 70% of the ticketing market in the United States60% of concert promotion, and exclusive contracts with 75% of the large venues (the numbers are comparable in other countries of the world). In this way, each business segment feeds and reinforces the others. Ticket revenue is used to tie artists into exclusive promotional contracts, allowing for long-term ticketing exclusives, with more commission income… and perpetuating itself ad infinitum. By controlling the entire distribution and business chain you earn more money. Parallel trends. This transformation of leisure does not come from nowhere. It is intertwined with a couple of trends that redefine current leisure. On the one hand, the shrinkflation cultural (untranslatable, but here it goes: shrinking inflation), reduce the size of the product while maintaining or even increasing the price. General admission prices to American festivals they rose 55% between 2014 and 2024. And it’s not just that it costs more: it’s that you receive less. What was once included (being able to bring your own food, access to free drinking water, reasonable personal space) is now sold as a “privilege” or outright prohibited. Furthermore, in 2006, Spirit Airlines introduced the “unbundling” model: a cheap ticket that only includes one seat. Luggage, seat selection and priority boarding became extras that, as in 2024 had generated billions of dollars in baggage and seat selection fees. In other words: the unbundling did not reduce the cost of flying, but rather fragmented the final price into multiple hidden charges. Because ultra-low-cost airlines operate with very tight margins in base notes, recovering profitability through peaks that represent up to 47% of income. Festivals follow the same recipe: tickets that barely cover fixed expenses, while the real margins come from drinks and food. And since now live performances are essential for the survival of the music industryit makes sense that all efforts are focused on making it profitable. A crucial moment. After decades of unstoppable advance in the commodification of every aspect of entertainment (from cinema to sports stadiums, passing through theme parks), this judicial ruling indicates that perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing in the opposite direction, at least in certain details. Consumers may not have completely lost the battle for “leisure as leisure” to the relentless “leisure as business” model that has been theorized for decades (Joseph Pine and James Gilmore spoke in 1998 of“the experience economy” and, even further back, the German sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer once defined visionary “colonization of free time) Extirpating leisure from capitalism. In 1944, the political economist Karl Polanyi published ‘The Great Transformation’where he argued that land, work and money are essential elements of life that They should never have become commodities. When the market attempts to subordinate “the very substance of society to the laws of the market,” society reacts spontaneously to protect itself from its own disintegration. So this judicial resolution is about being able to enter the next MadCool with a sandwich, but also about something more. Header | James Jeremy Beckers in Unsplash

In Finland they already know how to deal with excess heat from data centers: convert it into district heating

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Helsinki has found an unexpected ally to decarbonize its heating in the midst of the rise of artificial intelligence: waste heat from data centers. The same heat that servers generate when processing millions of queries, training AI models, or moving Internet traffic is no longer wasted. In the Finnish capital, this thermal flow – which is growing at the same rate as the digital world – is beginning to become shelter for tens of thousands of homes. A digital sector that is now heating up cities. For years, data centers were known for one uncomfortable characteristic: they generated a lot of heat and needed huge cooling systems to dissipate it. Now that residual heat is already being channeled to the Helsinki heating network, thanks to agreements signed with operators such as Equinix, Telia and Elisa. Data Center Dynamics remember that the company It has been testing this model for more than a decade – the first pilot tests date back to 2010 – but now the scale is completely different: the thermal demand of the city is enormous and the volume of heat generated by the digital economy is growing non-stop. The result can already be seen, a single data center can heat up to 20,000 homes, according to official figures from Helen. The Telia plant, for example, already recovers up to 90% of the heat generated by its servers, enough to heat 14,000 apartments, and in a few years it could double that figure to 28,000. A change in the way heat is produced. Digital heat recovery is more than just a technological curiosity. It represents a change in the way district heating is conceived. In the words of the Finnish company“the electricity consumed by data centers always ends up being converted into heat.” The difference is that now that heat is no longer released outside: it is reused. The engineering behind urban heat. Finland can convert digital heat into district heating because it has a network of district heating especially advanced: a network of pipes that distributes hot water to homes, schools and public buildings. The process is as follows. A data center generates heat: the servers run 24/7 and are continuously cooled. That heat, instead of being dissipated outside, is captured. It is then recovered and transferred; To do this, data centers can install their own recovery systems or use those offered by the energy company. The heat is sent to an “energy platform”, where heat pumps raise it to useful temperatures. Then, the temperature is adjusted to the 85–90 ºC necessary so that the water can circulate through the urban network. This is where high-temperature heat pumps come into play—some of which, like Patola’sthey work even with outside air at –20 ºC. Finally, the heat is injected into the grid and distributed throughout the city to heat thousands of buildings. Closing the energy circle. To understand why Finland leads this model, we must look at an essential technological element: heat pumps. Not only domestic ones, but also large-scale industrial ones, capable of raising waste heat to temperatures useful for an urban network. Europe—and especially the Nordic countries— has become a world leader of this technology. Finland has 524 heat pumps per 1,000 homes, a figure second only to Norway, and its cities have been electrifying heating for decades. This combination—cold climate, tradition of district heatingheat pump industry and the need to decarbonize quickly—turns Finland into an urban-scale energy laboratory. A model with limits. Although the system works, it is not a panacea. As Middle Parenthesis remembersnot all data centers are close to cores with thermal demand, not all generate enough heat to justify the investment, heat recovery improves efficiency but does not reduce the electrical consumption of data centers, and in hot climates or widely dispersed cities, replicating it is much more difficult. Still, the trend is clear. With the expansion of AI and the growth of cloudthe amount of heat available will only increase. The Nordic countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark – already take advantage of it, and large operators such as Microsoft and Google They explore similar systems across Europe. From silicon to the stove. The Finnish model shows that, even at the heart of digital infrastructure – those data centers that power our online lives – there can be hidden a useful and concrete source of energy for everyday life. The heat produced by our searches, our videos or our conversations with AI can be transformed, with the right infrastructure, into heating a home in Helsinki. In a world desperately seeking clean heat, Finland has already found a tangible, scalable and surprisingly logical answer: turning the thermal problem of the digital age into a solution for the Nordic climate. A silent reminder that, sometimes, the energy transition advances with a simpler approach: taking advantage of the heat that servers already produce tirelessly. Image | freepik and freepik Xataka | Someone cut five undersea cables in the Baltic. Finland already points to a ship from the “shadow fleet” as responsible

Microsoft had the deal of the century on its hands. A break of a year and a half was given to one of his rivals on a platter

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With its early deal with OpenAI, Microsoft was leading the AI ​​race in 2023. A year later it froze its expansion. Now Oracle serves OpenAI models and competitors share what Nadella’s company rejected. Why is it important. This isn’t just about lost data centers. Microsoft has assigned contracts with OpenAI valued at $420 billion to Oracle, equivalent to $150 billion in gross profit over five years. That would have increased its annual profitability by 18%. This means that in addition to losing growth, Microsoft also financed the entry of a rival into the most profitable business of the decade, according to analysis by Semianalysis. The facts. In 2023, Microsoft multiplied its investment in OpenAI tenfold to $10 billion and broke ground on the largest data centers ever built. Represented more than 60% of all infrastructure leases cloud among the greats. In 2024 it stopped everything in its tracks. It canceled 3.5 gigawatts of planned capacity — enough to power 2.5 million homes — and projects in a dozen countries. Its share of contracts fell below 25%. Between the lines. The company has used the argument of financial prudence: it did not want OpenAI to represent 50% of Azure’s revenue with lower margins than the traditional business. But the reality is simpler: he couldn’t keep up: OpenAI demanded a speed that Microsoft couldn’t match. Yes, but. The company has returned to the market with some urgency. The problem is that the options have been running out. Now rents capacity to neoclouds —specialized companies that build infrastructure—to resell it to third parties. It is a business with worse margins. The company that refused to build now pays commissions for having miscalculated. The money trail. Oracle is not the only winner. CoreWeave, Google, Amazon, Nscale and SB Energy have signed large contracts with OpenAI. In 2025, the story of OpenAI has been the story of its diversification away from Microsoft, although it is true that What seemed like a bad divorce ended in a separation of assets with forced smiles. The world’s most valuable AI lab had to fragment its infrastructure across multiple vendors because its original partner couldn’t—or wouldn’t—scale. In applications, Microsoft’s historical dominance with GitHub Copilot is also eroding. There are startups that have built more integrated code editors and scaled beyond Copilot. Microsoft has been forced to add the models of its rival Anthropic on GitHub Copilotwith a brutal cost for their margins. The company that had exclusive access to OpenAI now depends on its competitor to keep its code editor relevant. And now what. Microsoft has until 2032 before its agreement with OpenAI expires. It has Copilot with 100 million users. You have Office 365, Azure, and a business ecosystem that no one else can match. But the “great pause” of 2024 will take years to heal. The company has bet that the future of AI will be enterprise – with security and localization requirements – and not centralized in remote megacenters. You may be right. But 18 months of technology advantage is worth billions. And Microsoft just gave them away to its rivals. In Xataka | OpenAI has to pay debts of $400 billion in 2026. Nobody has the slightest idea how it is going to pay them Featured image | Simon Ray in Unsplash

Now you have to deal with the US pressure and China’s distrust

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Nvidia is dealing with one of the biggest challenges in its recent history. How do we tell you yesterdaythe administration of the cyberspace of China, usually known as CAC for its English denomination (Cyberspace Administration of China), he has decided Thoroughly investigate the H20 GPU. This institution is the main Internet regulatory body in China and is responsible for the censorship and control of the contents published in the Network, the supervision of technology companies and compliance with the Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law. Currently the chip for artificial intelligence (AI) H20 It is the best option that NVIDIA has to maintain its leadership in the Chinese market. The reception that Chinese companies initially gave to this GPU was very good despite the fact that the capacities of this chip are clearly lower than those of the other proposals for this company. In fact, the US Department of Commerce allowed its sale in China because this integrated circuit fulfilled the restrictions that had imposed. The problem that Nvidia faces now is that The CAC has decided to investigate it Because he suspects that the H20 chip could incorporate a rear door of difficult location by Chinese experts. If so, the possibility of China to use this GPU could be possible. At the moment the CAC has limited himself to questioning those responsible for NVIDIA in China and ask them to demonstrate that the H20 Chip does not represent a threat to the interests and security of the country led by Xi Jinping. Nvidia has already responded to the Chinese government As expected, Nvidia has immediately responded to the Chinese authorities and is collaborating to dissipate as soon as possible the doubts that loom about the H20 chip. According to SCMPthose responsible for the company in China have assured CAC researchers that the GPUs for Ia that they develop do not incorporate any “rear door” implemented to facilitate espionage by the US government. “Cybersecurity is of vital importance for us”, has declared A NVIDIA executive. “We have no rear doors in our chips that can give someone remote access or the ability to control them.” During the last Chinese fiscal year it represented approximately 13% of the total income of Nvidia For Nvidia this conflict is very important. His presence in the Chinese market is at stake. During the last fiscal year, which expired on January 26, 2025, China represented approximately 13% of total income of the company led by Jensen Huang with a figure of some 17,000 million dollars. Losing this source of income would lead to a serious problem for this company, hence the distrust of the Chinese government cannot be allowed to extend. However, this is not the only challenge that Nvidia faces. During the last two years the commercial war between China and the US has intensified, which has forced Nvidia to deal with the changing regulation of the US Department of Commerce. This organism establishes what conditions the chips must meet for the produced by US companies so that they can be sold in China. These requirements are increasingly restrictive, so Nvidia has been forced to redesign its GPU for the purpose of expressly adapting them to the Chinese market. Their engineers have been working on 2024 A new GPU with Blackwell microarchitecture The latest generation that is destined to occupy in China the place of the H20 chip, but right now its future is uncertain. Image | Nvidia More information | SCMP In Xataka | The US gives Huawei a great opportunity: to get its new chip for AI with the Nvidia market in China

Nvidia has to deal with the absolute distrust of several US legislators. His plan in China is in danger

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The dispute that Eeuu and China hold It is deeply conditioning the business of many Chinese companies, such as Huawei, SMIC or Hua Hong semiconductor, but is also affecting a very important way To some western companies. The Dutch ASML and the American Nvidia They are in all likelihood that are facing the greatest challenges as a result of the pulse maintained by the American and China administrations. The Chinese market is essential for both, but the sanctions that have approved US governments and the Netherlands They prevent them from selling their customers led by Xi Jinping a good part of their product porpholio. Even so, both companies are doing what is in their hand to defend their economic and commercial interests, and dispense with the Chinese market is not one of its options. In fact, Nvidia has officialized His intention to put a specialized installation in the design of integrated circuits in Shanghai (China). Some legislators consider that Nvidia’s plan is a threat to the US The newspaper The Wall Street Journal It has been made with a letter in which the Republican senator by Indiana Jim Banks and the Democratic Senator for Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren are directed directly to Jensen Huang, the general director of Nvidia. In this text these legislators argue that the installation that Nvidia plans to open in Shanghai represents a direct threat to US national security due to the possibility that China acquires the ability to design avant -garde GPU for artificial intelligence (AI). “No American company should be helping the Chinese Communist Party to close the gap in artificial intelligence,” Nvidia has responded immediately. There is too much at stake to take this light attention call. A spokesman for this company has expressed that its purpose “It is simply to rent a new space that the company’s employees can use after the return to work after the Coronavirus pandemic. The scope of work will not change“However, Nvidia’s official justification does not seem convincing for Warren and Banks. In fact, this last legislator has declared that “no American company should be helping the Chinese communist party to close the gap in artificial intelligence.” It is evident that this is an accusation of full -fledged Nvidia. A very serious accusation that complicates the future plans of the company led by Jensen Huang in China if we are in mind that the manifesto is backed at least by a senator of the Republican party and a senator of the Democratic Party. In addition, this claim comes at a very important moment for Nvidia. The engineers of this company have just concluded The development of a GPU With Blackwell microarchitecture aimed at replacing to the H20 chip whose sale in China has been prohibited by the last sanctions package of the Department of Commerce. The Nvidia Plan is that TSMC starts the manufacture of this GPU expressly intended for the Chinese market in June, but at the current situation it would not be surprising at all that the Department of Commerce prevents its delivery to Chinese clients in Nvidia. We will see what happens finally, but the panorama does not paint anything well for the company led by Jensen Huang. Image | Nvidia More information | The Wall Street Journal In Xataka | The US gives Huawei a great opportunity: to get its new chip for AI with the Nvidia market in China

Apple deal with tariffs, but wants not to be noticed. I consider up the price of the iPhone without mentioning them, according to WSJ

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September appears again in the calendar as the month of the iPhone. And if everything follows the usual pattern, Apple will take advantage of those dates to present its new family of smartphones, the iPhone 17. They are expected to arrive with design news and some relevant technical changes. But there is another aspect that begins to take strength: the price could rise, and not necessarily for obvious reasons. An increase on the table … with nuances. According to The Wall Street JournalApple is valuing a price increase in its next iPhone. The information, attributed to familiar sources with the company’s plans, points to a strategy that would combine this increase with the new functionalities and a redesign of the product. It is still not clear what these improvements would be exactly, but It has long been talking about an ultrafine model. The question of tariffs, the elephant in the room. The same sources assure that within the company there is a clear intention to prevent this possible rise from being publicly associated with American tariffs on products from China, where most iPhone are still manufactured. The reason is evident: in April, An article that hinted that Amazon It would show the impact of tariffs on the final price was enough for The White House considered it a hostile gesture. Bezos’ company had to deny that possibility quickly. A difficult climb to justify only with cuts. The context is not easy for Apple. According to the sources cited by WSJ, the margin of maneuver to cut costs through the suppliers is limited. That means that, if there is no price increase, the impact of tariffs would result in a direct reduction in benefits. Hence, according to these internal voices, the company is considering what they describe as “the less bad option”: to raise prices and present the changes as a natural evolution of the product. India progresses, but China is still essential. In parallel, Apple continues its geographical diversification process. Tim Cook already advanced that A significant part of the iPhone sold in the US during the second quarter will leave India. However, the production of high -end models – the Pro and Pro Max – will continue to depend mainly on China, sources say. Although India has also begun to assemble pro versions, apparently its technical infrastructure is not yet at the necessary level for equivalent mass production. The commercial agreement and what is still standing. This Monday, USA and China announced an agreement to suspend much of mutual tariffs. Even so, some remain active. Among them, a 20% tariff that reaches smartphones, linked to the conflict over fentanyl, and another of 10% that remains as a base rate. The truce is partial and temporary, which adds relief, but also uncertainty to the global board. And Europe, how does it fit this story?. At the moment, the focus is in the US market. But if the price increase is justified in product improvements and not in external factors such as tariffs, it cannot be ruled out that new prices are also transferred to Europe. For now, Apple has not made statements about it. From Xataka we have contacted the company to know its position. We will update this article when we have an answer. Images | Amanz | Niels Kehl In Xataka | We have been accustomed to the propaganda of the United States for years: now the era of Chinese propaganda has begun

A French people have to deal with an surprising incidence of ALS. The main suspect is a fungus

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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ELA (ALS in English) is a disease capable of wreaking havoc in our nervous system. Today It has no cure And what we know about its origin is quite limited. Throughout decades of study, we have been discovering risk factors related to the appearance of this disorder but perhaps the strangest was detected a few years ago in a town in the French Alps. The unique case of Montchavin. A few years ago, a group of researchers discovered that the French people of Montchavin, located near the Alpine border with Italy, has a high incidence of ELA. After investigating the case, the team pointed out as possible culprit To a very concrete element of local gastronomy, the fungus Gyromitra gigasa type of false colmenilla or false morilla. ELA. The Amyotrophic lateral sclerosisknown among other names as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a disease that affects neurons, both in our brain and spinal cord. It is a disease that is progressing until it ends the life of who suffers it. Today we do not know a cure, although there are treatments that relieve Some symptoms and increase the life expectancy of patients. The symptoms of this disease usually appear from the age of 50, although there are earlier cases, and They can start With problems walking, writing or speaking. The disease It generates the loss of muscle strength and coordination capacity, problems that extend to different muscle groups. Unknown cause. Today we have no accurate record of what mechanisms unleash this ailment, although we know Some risk factors correlated with their appearance. What we do know is that about 10% of cases are related to a genetic variant, and that the disease is more common among men than among women. Among the known risk factors are tobacco and exposure to certain environmental toxins. A higher prevalence has also been detected among people who did military service. The incidence of this disease It is between one and 2.6 annual cases per 100,000 inhabitants; with an approximate prevalence of about six cases per 100,000 per 100,000 people. An enigma in the French Alps. A few years ago, the cases of Montchavin unleashed the curiosity of the French neurologist Emmeline Lagrange. The health and its team accounted for 14 cases of ELA diagnosed between 1990 and 2018 linked to residents in this town, including migrants and people who had their second residence in Montchavin. Examining the case, the team did not find genetic factors that could justify the high incidence in the town. Although they found cases of smokers, they also ran into healthy habits in the group. Nor did they find clues of possible pollutants in land, air or water, or radon traces, a pollutant that could also be linked to this disease. From Pacific to France. As the journalist Terence Monmany narrates In an article For the medium Knowablethe team found a thread to throw on the remote island of Guam. On this island located in the archipelago of the Mariana Islands, in the Western Pacific, another team had detected a possible relationship between the consumption of potentially toxic seeds and the prevalence of neurological diseases (including ELA) among the natives. Although science is not settled in the causes of this epidemic, this hypothesis placed the consumption of food in the center of the debate. According to Detaine Monmanythe native chamorros treated these seeds with water to reduce their toxicity before their culinary preparation. This process would not be able to eliminate all toxins, giving rise to subsequent neurological damage. Gyromitra gigas. Something similar could be happening in Montchavin, not with seeds but with a mushroom. As the team observed, the cases could be drawn up to people linked to the collection and consumption of the fungus Gyromitra gigasa type of false morilla. It is a fungus in a toxic principle, but that, as in the case of Guam, can be treated to reduce its toxicity. In spite of this, the team maintains in its work that the incidence of the ELA in the town can be linked to its toxins and DNA lesions caused by these in the long term. The details of that study were published in 2021 In an article In the magazine Journal of the Neurological Sciences. A spurious relationship? In Xataka | I am a journalist, I have ela and I can’t move anything from my body except my eyes … So I write articles with my pupils Image | Henk Monster / Alexey Laa

Dodgers announce deal for Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki. Receives signing bonus of 6.5 million

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LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers announced on Wednesday their agreement with sought-after Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki by agreeing to a minor league contract with a signing bonus of $6.5 million. A 23-year-old right-hander with a fastball that tops 100 mph, Sasaki announced his intention to sign with the Dodgers on Friday and was introduced at a news conference Wednesday at Dodger Stadium. He joins Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the Dodgers after making a decision that had generated much expectation. Sasaki had until Thursday to finalize a contract. He was considered an international amateur under Major League Baseball rules because he is under 25 years old and does not have six years of service in Japan, which restricted him to the pool of international signings. The Dodgers started with an allocation of $5,146,200, but increased it to $8,102,800 with a pair of trades last week, acquiring $1.5 million from Cincinnati and $1,456,600 from Philadelphia. Los Angeles is contemplating using a six-starting rotation, which could ease Sasaki’s transition to the majors. The Dodgers are trying to become the first team to repeat as champion since the New York Yankees from 1998 to 2000. Sasaki was made available to major league teams for a 45-day period by the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Pacific League under the bidding agreement between Japan Professional Baseball and the majors. Because he is under 25 years old and does not have six years of Japanese league service time, Sasaki is considered an international amateur by MLB and is limited to a minor league contract subject to signing funds. The Marines will receive $1,625,000, 25% of Sasaki’s signing bonus amount. During a news conference at the winter meetings last month, Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe, denied that a deal was already in place with the Dodgers. Wolfe said MLB had investigated. Sasaki went 10-5 with a 2.35 ERA in 18 games last year, striking out 129 batters in 111 innings during a season limited by shoulder inflammation. He went 7-4 with a 1.78 ERA in 15 starts in 2023, when he suffered an oblique injury. Over his career, he is 29-15 with a 2.10 ERA over four seasons with the Marines and pitched a perfect game against Orix in April 2022. Among international amateur free agents, Los Angeles also agreed to deals with Venezuelan infielders Luis Tovar ($397,500) and Moisés Acacio ($197,500), Panamanian left-handed pitcher Adrián Torres ($362,500) and Colombian shortstop Luis Luna ($137,500). .

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