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The DGT is “favoring massive fraud” with the V-16 beacons. We don’t say it, FACUA denounces it

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Of favoring “massive fraud” and “very serious passivity.” This is how Rubén Sánchez, spokesperson for the consumer association FACUA, has defined the attitude taken by the DGT on the occasion of the arrival of the V-16 beacons, which will be mandatory from January 1, 2026 to replace the emergency triangles. The association defends that many drivers have bought beacons that are now useless. But, in addition, the press conference and the company’s statement also leave another door open: who and why are criticizing or defending the measure? “A massive fraud”. The words are not found in the statement issued by FACUA but he does pick them up Europa Press from the mouth of Rubén Sánchez, spokesperson for the association, who has accused the DGT of favoring a “massive fraud” with its “very serious passivity” in the face of V-16 beacons that are sold as “approved by the DGT” but in reality are not legal. At the press conference, Sánchez has been much harsher with Traffic than the association has published on its website, ensuring that “it is silent while a multitude of companies, manufacturers and sales platforms are making money at the expense” of consumers” and that the DGT is doing it “absolutely badly because it has allowed large-scale commercial fraud.” Because? Because some of the V-16 beacons that are sold as “approved by the DGT” are not valid, according to FACUA. The association assures that there are companies using this claim to sell their beacons but these do not meet the connectivity requirements and, therefore, an agent can fine the user if they use it in their car. How is it possible? There are two options in this case. The first is that, directly, the company that is selling these beacons is engaging in fraud. That is, you are knowingly selling a product using a claim that is false. Therefore, the best we can do if we find a particularly cheap beacon is review on the DGT website that we are facing a device that complies with all of the law. The other possibility is that the shopping centers have taken out of storage the beacons that began to be sold before their connection with DGT 3.0 was mandatory. At that time, it made perfect sense that the box stated that they were “approved by the DGT” but obviously they have been out of date. FACUA denounces the following: “The obligation to inform the consumer about “the essential characteristics of the good” and to provide him with “relevant, truthful and sufficient information” about it is also being violated, as established in articles 20.1.b and 60.1 of Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of November 16, which approves the consolidated text of the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users and other complementary laws” Tepidity. FACUA’s words contrast with those of other consumer associations. The most obvious case is that of OCU, who have been opposed on some occasions to the measures taken by the DGT, such as environmental labelingbut they have not been dissatisfied with the V-16 beacons. The consumer association has made publications specifying what requirements are necessary to have a V-16 beacon connected or dismantling hoaxes. Posts that come with discounts on subscriptions that have a V-16 beacon attached as an ol giftdirect sale of this product. Beacons, beacons everywhere. And the V-16 beacon has become the star product of Christmas. All the large surfaces are promoting this product with supposed discounts, large online shopping spaces such as AliExpress or Temu They take discounts on the product to their highest point. The companies telephone They deliver it with new contracts, Mail has it in its offices and driver associations such as RACE either RACC They also have theirs. It is the result of a process that has allowed certify the same product with very subtle differences and then sold under different names. The most flagrant and controversial case of recent days is that of Angel Gaitan. He influencer has repeatedly criticized the imposition of this new device but has not lost the opportunity to sell a beacon under your seal which, in reality, is the same as that approved by the inventors of the new device and those who received the first approval from the DGT to sell their beacons presuming complete legality. Photo | Facua In Xataka | Yes, next year I am going to carry the V-16 beacon because they force me to. It doesn’t even occur to me to throw away the triangles

There are 500 million users who could perfectly upgrade to Windows 11. The problem is that they don’t want to

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If you are reading this and still using Windows 10you are at risk. Microsoft a month and a half ago ended the official support period for this operating system that was launched in 2015. The curious thing is that what should be happening is not happening. Dell as an example of what is happening in the world. Dell COO Jeff Clarke recently participated in an interview at The Motley Fool and they asked him for his vision on how the end of Windows 10 would affect the migration of users to Windows 11. That’s when he confessed that all his expectations came crashing down. The end of Windows 10 pointed to the growth of Windows 11. In fact, Clarke explained that before it happened he was very confident that this end of the cycle would lead people to buy a new PC or install Windows 11 on their computers. However, the executive indicated that they have realized that the adoption of Windows 11 is between 10 and 12 points below what happened with previous generations: people are not updating to this operating system as they expected. 500 million users simply skip updating. Clarke’s estimate is that there are about 1.5 billion devices (PCs and laptops) running Windows, and that’s where he made the most disturbing statement: “There are about 500 million PCs capable of running Windows 11 that have not been updated. And we have another 500 million that are four years old and cannot run Windows 11. All of them pose a huge opportunity to upgrade to Windows 11.” And yet, they don’t do it, or what is the same: A third of global Windows users do not have a PC officially compatible with Windows 11 and cannot directly upgrade Another third have a PC compatible with Windows 11 but users simply They have chosen not to do so. If it works, don’t touch it? For many users, including business users, the unwritten rule is often precisely “if it works, don’t touch it.” This is especially delicate in companies, because they may depend on legacy systems and if they update to new versions, conflicts may arise that affect the operations of the business itself. And still… A colossal security hole. Once again, what is really worrying about this is that although these PCs and laptops are working correctly, if they are based on Windows 10 or previous versions of Windows, they are absolutely exposed to all kinds of security flaws. At any time, these PCs could become victims of malware that turns them into members of a botnet, or of ransomware that prevents us from accessing our data unless we pay a ransom. This is already bad for individual users, but for companies the risk is enormous. A ray of hope. Here we just have to wait for users to realize that updating their equipment is important and relatively easy. In fact, on officially compatible devices this is basically a matter of clicking the “Next” button when running the update wizard. If your device is not compatible, there is a trick. On computers that theoretically do not meet the conditions—such as, for example, that do not have native support for TPN 2.0—there are not excessive problems either, because it is possible to “trick” Windows with a command or even with the use of a modified version of Windows 11. Come on, although it seems that you cannot update to Windows 11, the most normal thing is that in reality yes you can. And of course, there is Linux. If for some reason what users don’t want is to upgrade to Windows 11 because they don’t like it, the options are there in the form of Linux distributions. It seems that this path is being chosen by an already notable number of users, and this is demonstrated by the fact that, for example, Zorin OS—a fork of Ubuntu—has seen its distribution Zorin OS 18which arrived just at the time when Windows 10 was no longer officially supported, has been downloaded more than a million times in the last few days. In Xataka | If you have an old PC, there is an effective alternative to Windows 11 requirements and bloatware: this is how Flyoobe works

We have had Stephen King releases for several weeks in a row. Don’t we know how to do anything else?

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The fall of 2025 has brought with it an avalanche of Stephen King: almost in consecutive weeks we have had the premiere of ‘The long march‘ and ‘The Running Man‘, and shortly before the series started ‘It: Welcome to Derry‘ on HBO Max. Three great productions in just one month. Are we facing an unimaginative industry that constantly turns to the same author, or is it that King continues to offer something that others cannot? The answer has three keys: the so-called Kingaissance, the decisive factor of the streaming and the current value of King, which has not been devalued by bad adaptations. Debunking the myth. To deny King’s supposed dependence on the horror genre, just look at the last twelve months of releases. Independent horror is enjoying an unsuspected golden age: ‘Longlegs’, for example, grossed more than one hundred million dollars at the box office with a budget of just ten, and films like ‘The substance‘ have given terror a life-long breath of quality, including Oscar nominations. Classic franchises such as ‘Final Destination’ are recovered, ‘Frankenstein’ is sweeping Netflix and a star system from horror creators: the aforementioned Perkins, Prano Bailey-Bond, Danny and Michael Philippou, Zach Creggar and Rose Glass, among others. The Kingaissance. The Anglo-Saxon media coined a term to describe what is happening: the “Kingaissance“, a revival that has a precise birth date. In September 2017, ‘It’ by Andy Muschietti became an unexpected cultural phenomenon: With a budget of just thirty-five million, it grossed more than seven hundred globally, becoming the highest-grossing horror film in history without adjusting for inflation. What followed was an avalanche. Without exhaustiveness: ‘Doctor Sleep’, ‘Animal Graveyard’, ‘Eyes of Fire’, ‘Salem’s Lot’, ‘In the Tall Grass’, the series ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Chapelwaite’… And now, three more adaptations, to which will be added the future television ‘Carrie’ by Mike Flanagan, ‘The Talisman’ for Netflix and perhaps a new ‘Cujo’. The difference with the eighties is abysmal. Back then, TV movies and B series predominated: now they are series on HBO and films with established directors. King himself often has creative control and serves as executive producer on many of these projects. The factor streaming. For decades, adaptations of King’s longer novels have been handicapped by having to compress their length to the margins of the feature film. He streaming changed the rules of the game: platforms now allow series of eight or ten episodes that respect the author’s narrative complexity, something that had previously only been experienced in miniseries format, in productions such as the first version of ‘It’ or ‘The Store’. It happened with ‘11.22.63’, with ‘The Stranger’, with ‘Lisey’s Story’ (which King personally wrote)… Now it is the turn of the prequel to the latest version of ‘It’, and it is clear how the logic of the platforms works: they look for recognizable IPs, and King offers dozens of stories with a bomb-proof dramatic structure. But there were bad adaptations of King. And they didn’t kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. It’s always happened: there are adaptations in miniseries format in the nineties, like ‘The Langoliers’ or ‘The Shining’ that are a pain. Since the nineties there have been as many weak King films as there have been notable ones. Very recent is the horrendous ‘The Dark Tower’ from 2017, which compressed eight novels into 95 disastrous minutes. Or ‘Cell’, absolutely forgettable. Why didn’t these catastrophes sink King’s value? First, the original novels remain, at worst, more than readable, and at best, downright excellent: the source material is indestructible. Second, readers clearly distinguish between author and adaptation, continue to appreciate the writer, and continue to try their hand at adaptations. Third, the good adaptations (‘The Shining,’ ‘Carrie,’ ‘It,’ ‘Misery,’ the original ‘Pet Sematary’) are so good that we’ll always come back for more. Why we return to King. The answer, despite appearances, is not a lack of ideas, but rather that we are faced with a name of proven effectiveness, even in its worst moments: few have that commercial hook combined with minimum standards of quality and entertainment. King has more than 65 novels and 200 short stories, an inexhaustible mine whose themes will never go out of style and are universal: generational traumas, addictions, the problems of the working class, invisible threats, the corruption of power, the weight of our past… And to top it off, we are in the era of the IP. So it is not an issue that affects only him. Marvel, DC, Disney… In 2024, the ten highest-grossing films They all came from pre-existing intellectual properties. And Hollywood seeks familiarity: from the Agatha Christie films directed by Kenneth Branagh to the explosion of video game adaptations like ‘fallout‘, ‘The Last of Us‘ and ‘Super Mario Bros.: The Movie‘. An ideal scenario for a brand that, undoubtedly, has had its ups and downs, but that right now enjoys unexpected iron health. In Xataka | There is a book by Stephen King that sells for around 100 euros and I got it for five: the strange story of ‘Rage’

We know that role-playing video games were born 50 years ago. What we don’t know exactly is which game was the first

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If when they ask you about the first role-playing video game in history, a legendary franchise will undoubtedly come to mind: ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘. The influence of the then newborn board role-playing game was undeniable in the first titles of the genre, but to determine a foundational touchstone we have a serious problem: there are several candidates. The first roles. In 1975, half a century agothe genre of role-playing video games as we know it was born. Just one year after Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson will publish ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘, different American university students They transferred the board game experience to computer systems of the time (huge mainframes or data systems), creating titles like ‘dnd’, ‘pedit5’ and ‘Dungeon’. Those experiments laid the foundations for the industry along with early icons like ‘Spacewar’, but determining which came first is not so easy. Why D&D. Dungeons & Dragons It sold 3,000 copies during its first year.a modest figure but behind which there is a great cultural impact among university students. Some of the concepts that ‘D&D’ introduced in early role-playing games (life points, accumulating experience, progression by levels, character classes, dice system – that is, chance – to resolve combat…) were of a statistical nature. It was ideal to be processed by computerswho calculated probabilities faster than any human game master. The convergence was inevitable: American campuses brought together both programmers with access to computers and players obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. Sometimes it was the same people. What was PLATO. This proto-internet served as the basis for many of these games to spread: its acronym is equivalent to Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, it was developed at the University of Illinois in 1960, and was born as an educational tool, although it ended up going far beyond that initial purpose. Towards the mid-seventies This network connected approximately a dozen mainframes with several thousand terminals distributed globally. The system incorporated revolutionary technologies for the time: plasma screens with a resolution of 512×512 pixels, interfaces 16×16 touch points and transmission speed of 1,200 bits per second. But his true legacy was to become a precursor to the Internet by including discussion forums, email, chat rooms and, at a certain point in its history, real-time multiplayer video games. In this way, and as it could not be otherwise, the university students subverted the initially academic purpose of PLATO: the programmers disguised their games with names that pretended to be educational files to avoid being detected and deleted by university administrators (hence the cryptic titles, almost based on acronyms, of some games). The pioneer dungeon. In this way, and thanks to the possibilities that PLATO offered, during 1975 several programmers worked without knowing each other on the creation of the first RPG for computer. Rusty Rutherford, a 35-year-old doctoral student at the University of Illinois, developed ‘pedit5‘ (also called ‘The Dungeon’). The game featured a fixed 40-50 room dungeon with random monster and treasure encounters, establishing the concept of the “dungeon crawl”. The character combined the three classic ‘D&D’ classes: warrior, wizard and cleric. Players generated attributes such as Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence, and had eight different spells at their disposal. The random nature of the encounters made it a direct precursor of the roguelike. The game could only hold 20 simultaneous characters, a limit that became a problem when its popularity exploded. The first final boss in history. Southern Illinois University students Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood completed ‘dnd‘ (‘The Game of Dungeons’) after ‘pedit5’ demonstrated the viability of the concept. ‘dnd’ expanded its offering with multiple dungeon levels, a teleporter system, and allowed players to leave the dungeon, recover, and return later, gradually accumulating power over multiple sessions. Its big innovation was a scoring system inspired by pinball machines, which made players collect gold and leave. The solution was to create an ultimate goal, the Orb, guarded by a dragon in the deepest levels. Thus, it was the first video game to feature a “boss fight”, a final climatic encounter. Technical sophistication. In California, meanwhile, Don Daglow was programming his own game, Dungeonfor him mainframe PDP-10 from Claremont University. Daglow implemented sophisticated mechanics: line of sight, fog of war, automapping, and NPCs with rudimentary artificial intelligence. The game required 36K of RAM, a very notable amount at the time. Finally, on November 4, 1975, John Daleske, Gary Fritz and their team released a second game called ‘Dungeon’ on PLATO, considered as one of the first MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). That same year ‘Moria’ also appeared, by Kevet Duncombe and Jim Battin, allowing up to ten simultaneous players in the same game, which is a direct precedent for future MMORPGs. In Xataka | Virtual dungeons: The successes and failures of bringing ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to video games

To enter the best “mental gym” in the world you don’t need a ticket: just language

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Learning languages ​​is something that For many it is essential with the aim of opening up new job opportunities or being able to travel without problems. But beyond practical usefulness, in everyday life it can also be good insurance for our brain in the long term by acting as a barrier against cognitive decline. Analyzing data from more than 86,000 people in 27 European countries, a study published in Nature Aging has put figures on something that neuroscience has been suspecting for many years: speaking several languages ​​not only broadens our mind or allows us to watch series in their original version, but also the brain stays younger. An AI model. Behind the study is an artificial intelligence model designed to estimate the so-called “biobehavioral age.” This means that a patient’s real age will be compared with what their body reflects with the results of their analysis, how their brain works or whether they have diabetes or hypertension. This is not an algorithm that has been created by chance, but has been developed by a European consortium of neuroscientists and measures this gap and classifies those who age slower or faster with a higher biological age. When applying this model, the results were clear: multilingualism acts as a powerful protective factor against the deterioration associated with the passage of time. The more language, the better. For researchers, we are facing a phenomenon that is ‘dose-dependent’, and it is something that has been seen after removing different variables such as socioeconomic context, years of education or migratory patterns. In fact, multilingualism emerged as a “cognitive reserve” factor comparable to regular physical exercise or a healthy diet, both considered pillars of brain health. The bilingual brain: a gym that never closes. Jason Rothman, a neuroscientist at Lancaster University and an expert on bilingualism, describes it as a form of permanent training: “Every time the brain selects one language and suppresses another, attention, memory and executive control networks are activated, the same ones that tend to deteriorate with age.” These networks, which are located in specific areas of the brain, are ultimately responsible for cognitive flexibility and decision making. The more they train, such as alternating languages, the more resilient they will become. There are discrepancies. If we look at other studies carried out in the past, the truth is that people do not always think alike. Numerous large-scale analyzes point to the existence of publication biases such as lack of replicability and, especially, that many advantages attributed to bilingualism are diluted or disappear once other factors such as education or socioeconomic status are carefully controlled. An illustrative example is Lehtonen’s work in 2018which reviewed more than 150 studies and concluded that the benefits in memory, inhibitory control or cognitive flexibility are not systematic or universally replicable, and usually depend on the type of cognitive tasks used, cultural and contextual differences or the profile of bilingual speakers. It’s not a miracle. The message that predominates today among the majority of specialists is one of caution and nuance. Learning several languages ​​can be positive for cognitive development, enhance mental flexibility in certain circumstances or delay symptoms of deterioration in certain profiles, but it is not a “universal vaccine” against brain aging. Education, continued intellectual activity, socioeconomic level, physical exercise and a healthy diet maintain a much higher weight, and often, the benefits attributed to bilingualism reflect these concomitant factors more than a direct effect of speaking several languages. Images | zhendong wang Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | That a teenager begins to ‘hate’ his parents is something that is in his brain, and science has already found the pattern

soldiers who save lives don’t have medals, they unlock the deadliest weapons

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At the beginning of November Ukraine updated the bloodiest game of the nation, that kind of “Amazon of war” where it borrowed the idea of ​​video games and their reward systems, granting points to its soldiers for eliminating enemy troops. Those points later could be exchanged for weapons and systems. Now, in a twist, the greatest reward does not come from an accurate shot, it comes from saving lives. War innovation. The war in Ukraine has entered a phase in which the technologythe incentive systems and management human resources they intertwine. The scenario is no longer defined only by the clash of armies, but by the ability of a country to transform its internal processes, accelerate the arrival of equipment to the front and keep together a military force subjected to extreme wear and tear. In this framework, the appearance of digital platforms capable of rewarding tactical actions, prioritizing the protection of lives and compressing the logistics chain in a matter of days reveals a country that is trying to compensate for numerical inferiority with structural innovation (ethics are more debatable). The morality. At the same time, this development occurs in a military theater where Russian pressure It’s intensewhere entire cities risk being isolated and where the political leadership is forced to decide between holding symbolic positions or preserve your soldiers for more sustainable lines. The convergence of both phenomena defines a war dynamic in which technology not only shapes the offense and defense, but also the moral and strategic considerations that determine each retreat, each advance and each sacrifice. Amazon and its new incentives. We told it at the beginning, the digitization of the war effort Ukrainian has crystallized into a system of rewards and acquisitions capable of altering the way units obtain weapons, electronic systems and tactical material. The platform Brave1 Market It allows any unit, from drone brigades to mechanized infantry battalions, to directly request equipment from manufacturers that previously depended on slow bureaucratic chains, with deadlines incompatible with the urgency of the front. Their catalogues, which cover weapons more expensive and deadly of the nation, have everything from drones to UGVs, electronic warfare systems, cameras, batteries, motors and satellite communications, devices that are constantly renewed as companies and volunteers integrate new technologies. The result is an almost instantaneous shopping environment, financed by the state but guided by the immediate needs of those who fight. The speed of the model, added to the monitoring of points accumulated by units throughout the country, has generated an internal competition that accelerates the incorporation of innovations and creates incentives to execute missions of high tactical impact. Some of the weapons and robots that can be redeemed in Brave1 Unlock save lives. Thus, on a front where medical evacuations have become one of the most lethal tasks due to the proliferation of reconnaissance and attack drones, unmanned ground vehicles have acquired a decisive relevance. These robots are capable of enter beaten areas by artillery or monitored by kamikaze drones, towing wounded from exposed positions, transporting ammunition and carrying out demolition missions against vehicles and fortified points. Expansion of the reward system to privilege the rescue Companionship introduces a change in focus: saving lives takes a central place in the incentive structure, generating not only practical effects on survival, but also psychological effects on troops fighting in an increasingly automated environment. This priority is reinforced with unit testimonials which have already experienced successful rescues, although not exempt from risks derived from the loss of signal or the need to operate in complex terrain. The strategic dilemma. And as innovation advances, the country faces repeated decisions about the fate of its most contested urban positions. Cities like Bakhmut either Avdiivka demonstrated that holding out for months can inflict severe losses on Russian forces, but also that prolonging the defense after losing supply routes leads to unsustainable attrition. With Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad threatened by Russian advances that seek progressive encirclement, the dilemma resurfaces between resisting to delay the enemy push or withdrawing to preserve essential units in a war of attrition. The difference between holding a position and losing an entire contingent of soldiers is measured in corridors increasingly narrowersubjected to continuous bombings and assaults by Russian groups that take advantage of the staff shortage Ukrainian to infiltrate weakened lines. This pattern has already been repeated in several scenarios where late withdrawal has led to captures, massive losses and the rapid fall of deep fortifications. The fragility of the defenses. The recent Russian advance in different sectors shows Moscow’s ability to exploit gaps that have emerged after months of continuous pressure. The reduction of troops Due to the prolonged defense of urban areas, it can result in an unexpected weakening of subsequent lines, which, if they do not receive reinforcements in time, are exposed to deeper ruptures. In areas such as southwest Donetsk and parts of Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces have captured several settlements in a short periodtaking advantage of both the Ukrainian wear and tear like weather conditions that limit the use of surveillance drones. The possibility that units trapped in cities under siege cannot withdraw affects not only the local balance, but also the entire defensive architecture of the eastern front, where the loss of trained personnel outweighs the loss of territory in a long-term war. A war of technological adaptation. If you like, the combination of a digitized incentive systemthe rise of ground robots and the relentless pressure about strategic cities draws a war in which innovation and survival are closely linked. The accelerated adoption of technologies distributed among brigades, the ability to purchase material in hours and the rescue prioritization Through multiplied rewards they form a network war model that attempts to compensate for resource asymmetry with organizational agility. It happens that this modernization develops in parallel to a front where the territorial decisions They involve the possibility of losing hundreds of soldiers in weeks, where the lack of trained personnel limits each counterattack and where withdrawal or prolonged resistance … Read more

If you don’t want to delete photos, videos or files, these cloud storage services can give you extra space

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Horror: you go to take a photo and discover that your mobile phone already has the storage full. There is always the option of deleting applications or files from it, but we don’t always want to get rid of information from our phone. The best solution is to opt for a cloud storage service: They are safe and there are some with very interesting extras. For this reason, we are going to talk to you about some options that may fit you if you are looking for one of these storages. pCloud The first option we bring you is pCloudone that may not be as popular as others on this list, but that works very well. It is a service that we can use on both MacOS, Windows and Linux as well as on mobile phones. In fact, its app allows you to automatically synchronize images or videos to upload them without doing anything else. It also allows you to make backup copies with pCloud and it even has a new photo editor included in all its plans. Another very interesting point about pCloud is the enormous variety of plans and modalities that we have available. The most economical way to get this service is its Premium subscription, which gives 500 GB storage for alone 4.99 euros per month. We can opt, if we prefer, for annual modalities or even for ones that are for life, more economical in the long run. pCloud monthly subscription The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Drive Almost all of us, for one reason or another, have a Google account. That is already an argument in favor of us using Google Drivethis company’s cloud storage service. It is a service that is characterized by being secure and very convenient to use, regardless of whether we want to store photos or videos. In addition, it is also perfect if we are looking to have collaborative documents. For free, we have 15 GB that we can use however we want. It is a small figure if we are photography lovers or we usually record video in 4K resolution, so we can get one of their payment plans. In that case, we can have 100 GB storage by 0.49 euros per month (for three months, then it costs 1.99 euros per month). The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Dropbox When looking for cloud storage, it’s impossible not to consider Dropbox. Depending on the plan we choose from all the ones it has, it allows you to restore deleted files (up to 1 year for its Advanced plan). Furthermore, its interface is very fast and easy to use, also allowing you to transfer files up to 100 GB. This service also allows you to choose whether you want annual or monthly billing. Focusing on its prices, the cheapest thing we can hire Dropbox is for 11.99 euros per month. In exchange, we will have 2 TB of storagea figure that is not bad at all. There are also modalities that allow you to share the subscription with other users. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links OneDrive If, in addition to sending photos or videos with your mobile phone, you plan to use the cloud with a Windows PC, OneDrive may interest you. One of its best features is being able to access your files from the same Explorer of this operating system. Besides, integrates with Microsoft 365 to be able to collaboratively edit Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents in real time. This service has a free option, one that only offers 5 GB of cloud storage. If we want more, we have your Microsoft 365 Basic plan available for 20 euros a year, thanks to which we will have 100 GB storage. It is a good option that is also available for iOS and Android. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links iCloud If we have one or more Apple devices at home, then we may be interested in having iCloud with us (although we can also use it with other operating systems). It is a very interesting platform that stands out for offering a simple, minimalist and very intuitive user experience. In addition, it allows you to store backup copies of Apple devices. For free, we only have 5 GB of storage. If we want more, then we should upgrade to one of the iCloud+ plans. The cheapest version that this platform has comes out for 0.99 euros per month and offers in exchange 50GB storage. If we want more, we have two others that offer 200 GB and 2 TB, respectively. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Etienne Girardet on UnsplashpCloud, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive In Xataka | How I organize my life in the “cloud”: the platforms and organization methods used by Xataka editors In Xataka | Google One, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud and all the options, face to face

30,000 lightning strikes, orange warnings and severe events: don’t call it ‘squall line’, call it ‘new normal’

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During the early morning and early hours of this Wednesday, November 5, the arrival of a cold front to the Peninsula has caused a very active squall line throughout the southwest. And, in this case, saying “very active” is not an exaggeration: the images that they come to us from Portugal they are incredible and at the moment, he is heading to Extremadura and Western Andalusia. The interesting thing is that we no longer talk about meteorological information, we begin to enter the field of Okay, but what is a squall line? This is an organized storm system that, often ahead of a cold front, forms in a line. Due to its structure, this phenomenon causes strong and destructive winds, torrential rains, hail and lightning. In addition, they are characterized by advancing very quickly and being able to cause significant damage. In Xataka The "tropicalization" of the atmosphere is going to change Spain and not exactly for the better And so it has been. Portugal’s Civil Protection recorded more than 150 nighttime incidents and, as the Portuguese press explainedit is not just the problems caused by the rain and wind; is that tens of thousands of electric shocks have been recorded. About 30,000 in a few hours. Given this, AEMET activated orange noticesin Galicia, Extremadura and Andalusia. In addition, 122 Extremadura is prepared for rains of 5–20 l/m² in very short periods of time. It’s not a lot of water, but in these circumstances it can cause a lot of problems. Aren’t we talking about autumn showers? No, we are not talking about loose showers: it is an organized convection capable of producing severe gusts, hail and wet blowouts. They are formations that trigger the risk on urban areas, electrical networks and mobility. It’s another episode of “This is not just an Atlantic storm” that has been with us for weeks now. It is true that November is a typical month for hallways in the southwest; but the data suggests that we are facing something more. {“videoId”:”x89b35l”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”PROFESSIONAL STORM CHASERS_ this is their daily life”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”400″} What is really happening? In technical terms, we are talking about the arrival of an Atlantic trough and cold front with sufficient shear to organize convection and force a quasi-linear system. Ambient humidity does the rest and that is the key. As we said a few days agothat area of ​​the peninsula is prone to low convergences that, with adequate shear and sufficient humidity,They organize convectively very easily. As connections with the Gulf of Mexico (the famous ‘rivers of moisture’) become more common and, with them, the available humidity grows: these systems will become more frequent and more intense. It is the same as occurs in the Mediterranean with DANAs: It doesn’t matter if climate change causes more or not, the amount of “available fuel” makes any spark turn into a fire. Meteorologically speaking, of course. Image | Carlos Virazón (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 30,000 lightning strikes, orange warnings and severe events: don’t call it ‘squall line’, call it ‘new normal’ was originally published in Xataka by Javier Jimenez .

Memes have become so self-referential and I don’t understand that anyone has had an idea: a Great Reset

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Have you ever felt like you don’t understand memes like you used to? What the hell is that thing Italian Brainrot? No, wait, that’s already out of fashion and has been replaced by another even more cryptic and incomprehensible trend. If you have been on the internet for a few years, you undoubtedly miss the times of some sillier and simpler memes. Those who defend a Great Reset of Memes by 2026 also believe that. And return to the times of epistemological simplicity in memetics. The GMR is coming. In January 2026, an internet cultural phenomenon known as ‘The Great Meme Reset of 2026’ is planned. This viral phenomenon, originating mainly on TikTok, proposes that the online community reboot humor and memes, returning to the memorable classics of the 2010s, in particular the iconic memes of the second half. This is a reaction to the saturation and wear and tear of recent memes, which are perceived by many users as forced, uncreative and unfunny. What we know lately as “brainrot”, and which has a lot to do with automatic and somewhat artificial creativity of AIs. What is intended? The idea of ​​this restart is to leave behind the current landscape of “niche” memes that dominate platforms like TikTok and that, according to their critics, accelerate the lifespan of memes too quickly, which last only a few days. The reset advocates a return to memes considered “dank” or “pure”, such as shrek things, Big Chungushe Trospid Knuckles either the legendary Sanicthe Rage Comics (unequivocal symbol that you are of an age) or the so-called Montage Parodiespure angst generational in terms of image and sound, and that marked meme culture in its first digital years. How it started. The origin of the “Great Meme Reset of 2026” is in March 2025, within an increasingly frustrated digital community. The first and involuntary starting signal was given on TikTok, when @joebro909 posted a video which addressed a sort of meme “drought”, proposing a “great reset” to save meme culture. Although it did not specify the date of 2026 or a complete renewal towards classic memes, it introduced the idea to the community of meme creators as a Trojan Horse. This concept took shape and gained popularity on social networks throughout 2025. In April, on Reddit They began to allude to the need to make this reset a reality in meme culture, specifically citing the idea of ​​returning to old memes. In September the campaign took off in a more clear and organized waywith several videos on TikTok proposing December 31, 2025 as the deadline for modern memes, and hoping that classic memes from the early years of the internet would return in 2026. This launch was reaffirmed by a viral video by @golden._vr, which accumulated almost 370,000 likesin which it was announced that upon December 31, 2025, memes would “return from the grave” and meme culture would be restarted from scratch in 2026. It’s all a huge joke, of course, but it reveals a point of view and a generational conflict. Memetics as culture shock. There is a clear generational gap in the way humor is conceived and consumed on the internet: on the one hand, classic memes played with conciseness and standardized formats, templates; On the other hand, the current phenomenon of brainrot It is an uncontrolled torrent of self-referential content that devours itself, and that has a total disconnection from the previous humor. They are two ways of understanding not the digital, but directly the observation of reality. The millennials come the brainrot like the degeneration of humor: noise, worthless content, a sign of the damage that perverse overexposure to the Internet has done, and they demand meaning and coherence. Generation Z and Alpha find 2010s memes dated, slow, and too literal. He brainrot It is his way of reflecting the chaotic, fragmented and accelerated reality of the Internet, where logic is an obsolete concept. The joke is that there is no joke. And we are not going to agree on that, not even with a reset. In Xataka | Neither left nor right: Charlie Kirk’s murderer did so motivated by a labyrinthine subculture of memes

If we don’t see aliens it is because of our “epistemological limitations”

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What if aliens are everywhere, but we are cognitively unable to perceive them? A Serbian philosopher has proposed a disturbing solution to the Fermi paradox: The answer is not in the universe, but in the limits of our own brain. Where is everyone? The Fermi Paradox is one of the most famous questions in modern science. The universe is immense and very ancient. The lights we see in the sky are billions of galaxies and trillions of planets. By mere statistics, intelligent life should be common. If this is so, why haven’t we found the slightest evidence of it? Why haven’t we seen its megastructures, caught its signals or received visitors? “Where is everyone?” physicist Enrico Fermi asked in 1950. The Great Filter. There are many brilliant minds who have dared to use the Fermi Paradox. Many of the answers fall under what has come to be known as “The Great Filter”: something that prevents the development of a higher level civilization in the Kardashev scale. Perhaps advanced civilizations tend to annihilate themselves in nuclear wars, or perish in the face of lethal climate change before they can colonize the galaxy. Perhaps the conditions that allowed life here are an unrepeatable cosmic coincidence. We are alone because we are a rare bird. The ego can get us. All of these solutions have a root problem: they are deeply anthropocentric. They assume that other intelligent life forms are like us, that they use technology that we can detect. What if the great silence of the cosmos was nothing more than the result of searching for radio signals when the intelligent life we ​​seek communicates across dimensions we cannot even imagine? We are dumb as worms. This is where the proposal of the Serbian philosopher Vojin Rakić, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology. Rakić calls it the “solution to enduring human epistemological limitations.” The key is in the term “epistemological”, which in the theory of knowledge is how we know what we know and what the limits of our perception are. Extraterrestrial life could be so radically different from us that it simply our brain is not equipped to recognize it. We are to aliens what worms are to us. So? Well, if Rakić is right, there isn’t much to do. We look for little green men in flying saucers, but intelligent life could exist as a form of non-physical consciousness, an interdimensional energy network, or an intelligence based on dark matter. Rakić uses very powerful terrestrial analogies. We know that octopuses are incredibly intelligent, but their nervous system is completely foreign to ours. Fungal networks demonstrate a complexity that goes unnoticed by us. And few would have imagined that a handful of silicon chips would give rise to AI. How can we explain to someone from a couple of centuries ago that we have taught stones to speak? SETI is already at it. This idea, which might seem like pure philosophy, is catching on in the scientific community. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) itself has made an appeal to “abandon the anthropocentric perspective” in their exploratory work. It is not about stopping searching, but about expanding our definition of life and intelligence, thinking that “other minds” might have nothing to do with terrestrial biology. For now, our best weapon to stop being dumb as worms is to advance our own science and improve our own cognition. Image | NSF/NSF NRAO/AUI/B.Foott

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