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Get four months free of one of the best VPNs on the market just for being part of Xataka Xtra

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At Xataka we are not only passionate about technology: we are obsessed with understanding how it impacts us on a daily basis. That is why we have launched Xataka Xtraour community for readers who want to go one step further. And since we want to make being part of this worthwhile from minute one, we will tell you one of the advantages you get with Xtra: four free months of NordVPN for all subscribers on one- or two-year plans. We don’t want this to be a discount code and that’s it. We want to take the opportunity to explain to you why in 2026 a VPN is no longer a mere addition for people jealous of their privacy, but rather a basic tool for anyone who uses the internet. It’s not just hiding your IP (that’s the least of it) You probably associate using VPN to bypass geoblocks for certain services and applications. NordVPN has more than 9,000 servers in 111 countriesso this does it very well, but it does much more: Malware Protection: NordVPN is not just a VPN. Its function Threat Protection Pro It analyzes the files you download and the websites you visit in real time. Not only does it protect you from viruses, it blocks intrusive trackers and ads before they load. Post-quantum security: We already know that quantum computers will have the ability to break any encryption that exists to date, present and past. NordVPN already implements post-quantum encryption for when that time comes. This is important because it provides protection so that your current data cannot be decrypted even with the technologies that are to come. Extra layer against phishing: Many security breaches occur due to theft of credentials or phishingso having extra protection against these types of attacks comes in handy. Compatible with 10 devices: With a single account you can protect your mobile phone, your laptop, your partner’s and even your Smart TV, as it allows up to 10 devices to be connected simultaneously. NordVPN 76% discount on NordVPN (this offer does not include the 4 months of Xataka Xtra) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Why we choose NordVPN At Xataka we try to avoid marketing promises and always look for support in data. And in that NordVPN gives us a lot of confidence: they have just overcome your sixth independent “zero records” audit (no-logs) conducted by Deloitte. This implies that one of the world’s largest auditing firms has gone into the kitchen of its systems—interviewing employees and analyzing each server—to confirm that NordVPN does not track, collect or store anything you do online. Whether you choose NordVPN or any other VPN service, we highly recommend making this one of the basic requirements you ask for. It is important because in this sector there are many companies that claim to protect your privacy but then end up selling your data. With this independent audit, NordVPN opens its doors to demonstrate that they deliver what they promise. It is a transparency that gives us a lot of peace of mind. We are waiting for you at Xataka Xtra In Xataka Xtra We want to build something different: more closeness, exclusive content and advantages that really add to your digital life. This collaboration with NordVPN is just the beginning. Yeah You join today with an annual or two-year planyou take those four extra months as a gift to start browsing as you should: quickly, safely and without anyone tracking your steps. In Xataka | What is a VPN connection, what is it for and what advantages does it have?

Donating cash to children is exempt from personal income tax for parents. It is not free for children

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Young people do not have it easy to get ahead in a context of very tight salaries and with him housing prices skyrocketed. Therefore, helping children or a family member financially becomes the natural impulse. However, this willingness to help may have tax consequences What is important to know before making the transfer. In a binding query Addressed to the General Directorate of Taxes (DGT), a body dependent on the Treasury, a person raised the possibility of helping his family financially through a cash donation. The consultation made it abundantly clear: anyone who donates cash has nothing to fear on their tax return. The same cannot be said about the person who receives it. ​What the Treasury says about the donor’s personal income tax. The General Directorate of Taxes responded to a person who wanted to donate cash to his mother. The DGT pulled the file and argued its response in a previous binding consultation, in which a father raised the tax consequences of donating cash to his children. The Treasury’s response establishes that “for the donation of money, no capital gain or loss will be computed for the donor,” which implies that on the part of the person who gives that money there is nothing to declare or pay in the Income Tax. The technical reasoning is quite logical and simple. When money is donated, there is no difference between the value at which it was acquired and the value at which it is transmitted, so there is no alteration in the donor’s assets that justifies paying taxes on it, as established in article 33.1 of the Law on Personal Income Tax. When the gift is not money, the story changes. The organization itself takes advantage of the consultation to remember that the exemption from personal income tax taxation Applies exclusively to cash donations. That means that if parents They donate a home to their children that they bought 20 years ago for 100,000 euros, and that at the time of donation its value is 200,000 euros, must pay personal income tax for that increase of 100,000 euros in its value between the date of purchase and the donation. The same occurs with shares or other assets with market value that may increase in value between the purchase price and the donation price. The most curious thing is that this principle does not apply in the same way if that same property had lost value since its purchase, the donor would not be able to deduct that loss. Children do pay the Gift Tax. It should be noted that the fact that the father does not pay personal income tax for that donation does not mean that the transfer of assets has no consequences for the person who receives it. The child who receives the money is obliged to declare the donation and settle the Inheritance and Donation Tax. This tax falls on the person who receives the donation, not on the donor. The amount to be paid for the child or family member depends on factors such as the amount received, the degree of relationship and, above all, the autonomous community where the recipient resides for tax purposes. Depending on what requirements are met, the amount to pay may be close to zero euros, but it is necessary to complete the procedure. If the donation is not declared within the established period, the Treasury may impose penalties and interest. A tax that depends on the communities. The Inheritance and Donation Tax is partially transferred to the autonomous communities, which means that each community sets its own bonuses, reductions and tax rates. This generates very notable differences between paying this tax in one community or another. Madrid and Andalusia, for example, apply a 99% bonus on donations between parents and children, which in practice means that the recipient barely pays taxes when making this type of donation. At the opposite extreme, communities such as Catalonia or the Valencian Community have more demanding tax systems, with progressive rates and fewer bonuses. A particularly striking case is that of Extremadura, which has extended the exemption up to 200,000 euros in donations for children to buy their first home. In Xataka | The Great Wealth Transfer: the movement from boomers to millennials that will transfer millions between generations Image | Pexels (Kaboompics.com)

Telecinco audiences have been in free fall for four years and their recovery has come with an unexpected format: blind weddings

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He success of ‘Married at First Sight’ on Telecinco and the more than 410 million dollars generated by ‘Love Is Blind’ on Netflix show that realities Romantic and friendly blind weddings are no longer entertainment to watch on the sly and feel guilty. Now they generate very profitable franchises and, in the case of Mediaset, a welcome boost of oxygen to their disastrous audiences. Getting married without knowing each other: the origins. Well, the origins are the traditional weddings of convenience, but let’s talk about TV. In 2013, the Danish public channel DR3 broadcast the first episode of ‘Gift ved første blik’, where a panel of experts in psychology and compatibility paired strangers who would meet for the first time at the altar, getting legally married before starting to live together. The success in his country was immediate and generated the ‘Married at First Sight’ franchise, which has had 35 different versions before reaching Spain, where it was already seen in 2015 on Antena 3. In 2026 it reached a new version on Telecinco. The hearings. The result in terms of audience has been very stimulating for the Mediaset channel, after months of trying with launches and schedule changes that have not quite worked out. The premiere recorded a 13.9% audience share and nearly 947,000 viewers, leading its time slot, with a devastating 22.2% in the age group of 25 to 44 years. The following weeks consolidated and even improved those numbers, reaching 14.2%. 44% of viewers who saw the premiere repeated in the second broadcast, which indicates a level of loyalty that Telecinco needs like breathing. For this reason, it has already announced the renewal for a second season. We already know the context: Telecinco is going through a very serious audience crisisclosed 2025 with a 9.4% average annual share (the worst result in its history), which may end up impacting its advertising revenue. That is why in 2026 Mediaset is adopting a conservative policy, returning to its realities classics and experimenting just enough with programs like this one, new but with proven formulas. Blind dates. Meanwhile, Netflix finds success with a very similar format: ‘Love Is Blind’, which the platform premiered in 2020. In it there were no experts who matched the contestants, but rather a group of single men and another group of single women who got to know each other on dates without seeing each other physically, until couples were formed and we saw them becoming intimate in coexistence. Thirty million households watched it in the first four weeks of broadcast. The franchise has already spread to eleven countries, from Brazil to Japan. The figures for ‘Love Is Blind’. The data analysis company Parrot Analytics has estimated that he reality has generated more than $410 million in global subscriber revenue since its premiere. The secret of these stratospheric figures (and other realities platform romances like ‘Jugando con fuego’) is in its structure: fixed format, rotating casting with each season. It’s like a fictional franchise, but at a much faster pace, because each season is produced before the previous one ends. The cost of between 100,000 and 500,000 dollars per episode makes these programs much more attractive to platforms than fiction. When Netflix saw what it had on its hands (‘Love Is Blind’ remained among Netflix’s ten most viewed titles in the United States for 86 days in 2022) it did not put all its eggs in the same basket: it diversified the bet into different countries, each with its regional peculiarities, which multiplies income without doing so proportionally to the cost because, for example, the advertising is done. Furthermore, unlike the binge watching Common on Netflix, episodes are released weekly, which keeps the conversation going on networks. A historic format. They are not the first programs of this type: ‘Blind Date’, on ABC in 1949, when there were hardly any televisions in American homes, and ‘The Dating Game’ in the sixties They exploited similar starting points. What ‘Married at First Sight’ brought was the panel of experts that gave a pseudoscientific excuse to the fooling around between strangers and the inevitable marital quarrels. But what makes them a financial triumph is the economics of their production, which has turned Netflix’s proposal into one of the most profitable ideas in the history of the platform. In Xataka | Spotify and Netflix join forces, entering unexplored territory that has nothing to do with music, movies or series

Today its app has more than 6,000 million downloads and is still free and without ads

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There is software so good that it is difficult to believe that it is free because it constitutes an almost anachronistic technological rarity: an echo of that Internet that no longer exists, where valuable information ran through forums far from ruthless algorithms and the perennial interest in monetizing everything. VLC is probably the most extreme case: a free, ad-free, all-terrain player without a corporate owner that has been essential for anyone who watches videos for almost three decades. In figures. Some data that show the impressive evolution of the project in these 30 years: At CES 2025VLC announced two things: the arrival of AI subtitles and that the figure had risen to 6 billion downloads. In March 2024, the official download figure It was 5,000 million. Of those 6 billion downloads, 4.8 billion correspond to Windows. MacOS is much further away, with 380 million, according to data from the VideoLAN statistical system. The beginnings were difficult: in 2009 and after more than a decade of development, version 1.0.0 of VLC was published. A university project. VLC was born in 1996 at the École Centrale Paris, one of the great French technical schools. The VIA Centrale Réseaux computer club wanted to modernize the campus network, an outdated LAN that made any transfer very slow, but needed a technical argument to justify it. The solution was develop an application to broadcast and display network video that would consume enough bandwidth to make the update inevitable. More specifically, there were two programs: the VLS server (VideoLAN Server) and the VLC player client (VideoLAN Client). They were designed with a modular architecture to be able to adapt them to different operating systems without rewriting the entire code, something they would appreciate later. In 1998 they achieved the first successful broadcast and playback in MPEG-2 format. The liberation of being open source. In the beginning, VLC belonged to the university in a closed way, but the students struggled for years to convince the institution to release the project. In 2001, got it: Obtained the free and open source software license GNU General Public License. This decision was a turning point, a real catalyst for everyone from around the world to contribute, going from a university project to something in the community. Of course, when the Free Software Foundation published the new GPLv3, VLC did not update for a practical matter: I had too many collaborators and libraries to get the yes and along the way I would probably have worsened their compatibility. Goodbye to the Ecole. In 2009, VLC graduated from the École Centrale Paris and completely disassociated himself from the academic organization. Since then it has been managed by a non-profit organization, the VideoLAN Organization and which has one of the people who started the project as president, Jean-Baptiste Kempf. It was not a bed of roses. In 2010, VLC arrived on the Apple App Store, but a few months later He was removed due to problems with his license.. Its license at the time, GPLv2, required that the software be completely free of restrictions, something incompatible with Apple’s distribution conditions. The team had to relicense the VLC engine with a more permissive license (LGPL) compatible with App Store policies. Of course, it was a long and legally tortuous process (it required the consent of its authors). VLC finally returned to the Apple store in 2013. Advertising? No, thanks. VLC is free and has no ads by philosophy, as Kempf tells it in this video. For its co-creator, money can be a prison, a limitation if it becomes his main objective. In short: monetizing the most important thing means that the software and its users take a backseat. And there has been no shortage of offers. When we asked Jean Bastiste Kempf for these offers, he confirmed it to us: “We received several offers to buy VLC or to receive millions a year, but that meant adding some type of crapware either adware on users’ computers (changing the home page, inserting ads on web pages, toolbars, etc…), and we reject it. Basically, even if everyone does it, it’s making everyone’s life worse. It’s unethical, and we didn’t do it.” He summed up his philosophy in one sentence: “the search for money cannot be done at any price.” Your business model. The million dollar question if VLC does not have ads or charge a subscription or have premium payment options is: how does it make money? Essentially, in two ways: through donations from its users and with VideoLabsa business branch that has first class clients like Microsoft, Acer or Amazon. Despite its enormous volume of downloads, VLC maintains a light structure, since it is supported by a community of volunteers. In Xataka | 16 years ago a student from Barcelona was looking for an easy way to edit PDFs. The website he created is one of the most viewed on the internet Cover | Ibrahim Boran and By Axelle Manfrini (Wikipedia)

free geothermal and waste-based heating

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The race to dominate artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer waged only in the aseptic laboratories of Silicon Valley or in microchip factories; is moving towards a much more earthly and critical terrain: electricity. At a time when data centers threaten to saturate the global electrical grid due to their voracious consumption, big technology companies are desperately seeking sources of continuous, stable and emission-free energy. The answer, surprisingly, does not seem to lie in looking to the sky for sun or wind, but in drilling down, miles underground. Geothermal energy has ceased to be a secondary actor and has become the great hope of the sector. But in Europe, this technological revolution is accompanied by a master shift. It’s been under our feet. Historically, geothermal energy generation was considered viable almost exclusively in exceptional volcanic regions, such as Iceland or Indonesia. It depended on finding underground pockets that naturally had heat, water, and permeable rock. However, as the report explains Hot stuff: geothermal energy in Europe of the Ember think tankthe technological advances of the last decade have completely rewritten this map. The industry has adapted deep drilling and reservoir engineering techniques from the oil and gas sector, reducing well costs by approximately 40%. Now, so-called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) allow fluids to be injected to create artificial fissures in hot, dry rock, extract that heat and generate electricity at the surface, regardless of the natural permeability of the ground. Numbers that change the energy board. The impact of this technological disruption is monumental. As detailed by analyst Pawel Czyzak in his newslettergeothermal energy can now be produced at levelized costs (LCoE) of less than €100/MWh. To put it in perspective, the marginal cost of electricity generated by gas and coal in Europe ranged between €90 and €150/MWh during 2025. Geothermal is already economically competitive. In the European Union, this technology could develop around 43 GW of commercially viable capacity today. With geothermal plants operating 24/7, this would translate into around 301 TWh of electricity per year, the equivalent of replacing 42% of all EU coal and gas power generation last year. The countries with the greatest potential identified under this profitability threshold are Hungary (with 28 GW), Poland, Germany and France. The “Triple Victory” strategy. Europe’s great asset lies in geography and urban planning. According to Czyzak,the areas with the greatest geothermal potential at 5,000 meters depth coincide strikingly with large European data center nodes – such as Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt – and with planned district heating networks (known as district heating). The plan is to locate data centers near these geothermal plants. The plant powers the AI ​​and, subsequently, the waste heat generated by both the plant and the servers themselves is injected into the district heating networks. Institutions are already making moves. By the end of 2024, the Council and the European Parliament supported the creation of a European Geothermal Alliance to expedite permits and finance the sector. In this scenario, Spain claims a leading role: Vice President Teresa Ribera (whose position is now held by Sara Aagese) announced an injection of 100 million euros for ten deep geothermal projects. The majority will be located in the Canary Islands due to their exceptional volcanic subsoilalthough the peninsula already has pioneering projects underway, such as the 150-meter wells on the Vitoria university campus or the 6.5 MW installation in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. The Nordic laboratory. To understand how the final part of this plan—heating homes with data—works. you have to look at Helsinki. The Finnish capital has found an unexpected ally in the residual heat of servers to decarbonize its winters. Through the energy company Helen, the city has been testing this model for years. The results show that a single data center in Helsinki can heat up to 20,000 homes. The Telia installation, for example, already recovers 90% of the heat emitted by its machines, currently providing shelter to 14,000 apartments. This thermal miracle requires two elements: an extensive network of urban pipes (district heating) and huge industrial heat pumps that raise the temperature of the waste water to the 85-90 ºC necessary for the urban network. Europe, and especially the Nordic countries, are leading the adoption of these heat pumps, turning Finland into a full-scale laboratory for what the future of the continent could be. The risk of missing the technological train. Despite the promising outlook, Europe faces serious obstacles. As the Ember report warnsthe Old Continent invented geothermal electricity (the first plant was inaugurated in Larderello, Italy, in 1904), but now it risks giving up its leadership. As the United States and Canada scale commercially thanks to aggressive tax incentives (such as Inflation Reduction Act) and the private investment of the Big TechEurope is drowning in a morass of slow and complex permitting, inconsistent national support frameworks and a lack of financial risk mitigation for early phases of drilling. Up to 64%. If the EU does not channel innovation funds and simplify bureaucracy, supply chain and cost reduction will consolidate outside its borders. In fact, US research cited by Ember indicates that geothermal could cost-effectively cover up to 64% of the projected increase in electricity demand from US data centers by the early 2030s. The reward for doing things well is economic prosperity. As Czyzak recalls based on his experienceIceland in 1940 was 70% dependent on coal and was one of the poorest economies in the West; Today, thanks to a 100% clean electrical grid (30% geothermal, 70% hydroelectric), it attracted the aluminum industry and became the fifth country in the world in GDP per capita. Deep geothermal could be that same catalyst for countries like Hungary or Slovakia in the era of artificial intelligence. The earthly paradox of the cloud. In their eagerness not to stop the progress of their algorithms, giants like Google or Meta have understood that the solution is not just to look at the sky waiting for the sun to shine or the … Read more

How to find free, open source or one-time payment alternatives to subscription services with this website

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Do you want to reduce the number of subscriptions you pay? Let’s tell you how to find the best alternatives to programs and applications that require a subscription. Among the alternatives you will have open source services, free or that only require a single payment. We are going to do this with one of those pages that should be saved in favorites. It’s about the web nosubscription.organd we are going to teach you how to use it to find your alternatives. The best alternatives to subscription services NoSubscription is a project with a manifesto in which they believe that users should own their toolsnot renting them with monthly subscriptions. For this reason, those responsible for the website say their mission is to find, verify and promote the best software and services that you buy with a single payment, free and open source. All you have to do is enter nosubscription.organd at the top use your search engine. In it, you can write the name of the subscription tool you want to replacebut also the category of the tool or application. When you type a name, the results will appear with the best alternatives. Notice that below the name it appears which services are alternatives for, because sometimes it can appear out of order. Then, The type of price will appear in green that is, as if it is free or even the total price if it is a single payment. And if you write a category, such as Socialyou will see that alternatives appear and in each one for which service or social network they are a substitute. you will also see What operating systems do you have apps for?with the logos of each one or a globe if used by browser. You can also look for alternatives to other applications popular ones, like Chrome, social networks, operating systems, whatever. When you click on one of the services you will go to its file. In it you will have a description and a list with its key features. On the right you will see its category, the type of application or service it is, where it is available and a button to go to the official website in case you want to find out more. In Xataka Basics | European alternatives to Gmail and Outlook: the best email providers made in Europe

Living for free in your parents’ house does not imply a donation of the home

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He house price It is one of the main obstacles to the emancipation of young people in Spain. According to data According to the Spanish Youth Council, only 15.2% of young people can afford to live outside the family home. Of them, 57.9% do so in rented apartments and a third of these young people share a flat with other young people to be able to bear the expenses. In this context, it is not strange to find people over 30 years old living with their parents. However, according to have confirmed the Ministry of Finance to VerifyRTVEit is false that living for free in your parents’ home, or in “any property of your parents”, can be considered “as a donation”. The Treasury makes it clear: there is no donation. Both from the Ministry of Finance like from the union of Technicians of the Ministry of Finance (GESTHA) point out that there is no tax or legal change that penalizes children for residing in the family home. Sources from the Ministry of Finance confirmed to damn.es that “there have been no legal changes or changes in the orientation of administrative actions since the IRPF existed, nor has it ever been considered a fiscal risk.” Carlos Cruzado, president of the GESTHA union, explained to RTVE that no taxes or duties apply additional taxes for the simple fact that an adult shares a home with his or her parents. Donation is a change of ownership, not use. The reason why no charge is made is because, simply, when a child lives with his or her parents, no transfer of assets occurs. The consensual use that is made of it changes, not the ownership. This change of use between family members without financial compensation does not fit into any of the assumptions of the Inheritance and Donation Taxso neither parents nor children they must pay that tax. The professor of Financial Law Rosa María Galán pointed to damn.es that, in the case of children without economic resources to survive on their own, the article 142 of the Civil Code obliges parents to cover the support, housing, clothing and medical care of their children. There is no need to argue for free coexistence since providing it is a legal obligation. It even applies to second homes. This same logic applies even when parents and children do not live in the same property, but, for example, the parents live in the primary home, and the children in a second residence owned by the parents. According to Cruzado, the Treasury “understands that there may be a free transfer and does not allocate a return at market value.” In this case, the parents are taxed the same as if the home were empty due to the imputation of real estate income in personal income tax, the same obligations that already exist. for having a second residence without regular use. In this case, the owner of the home must pay a tax of 2% of the cadastral value of the property, and in some cases is reduced to 1.1%. That is, what is taxed is the condition of second home ownership, not the fact that children live in the home or not. The transfer of use is not a donation: the distinction that changes everything. As and as explained José María Salcedo, managing partner of the tax firm Salcedo Tax Litigation to Idealistiche article 6.5 of the Personal Income Tax Law establishes a presumption of onerousness. This means that the Treasury tends to assume that any transfer has a price. However, this presumption admits evidence to the contrary, and the most common instrument to prove it is the bailment contracta document that formalizes the loan of the property without financial consideration and that, according to Cruzado, the Treasury “does not usually carry out these checks”, although it serves as a guarantee to justify “free of charge the right to use someone else’s property for a certain period of time.” In Xataka | There is a less painful solution so that an inheritance does not become a ruin for the heirs: renounce it Image | Pexels (Kampus Production)

Free PS4 and PS5 games in March 2026 for PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra and Premium

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One more month is ending, and Sony has already published the list of games that will be given to you at no additional cost in March 2026 if you have a subscription to PlayStation Plus. These are 4 new titles that will be available starting March 3 for subscribers of any of the versions of this service, and which you can play whenever you want at no additional cost as long as you maintain your subscription. PlayStation 5 It is backward compatible with the PS4, which means that you can play all the games from the previous generation on it. In the list of games we are going to put you games with official prices from the official Sony website, which may sometimes be different from what you will find in stores, but which serve as a reference to see the value of the games you get. Free games for PS4 and PS5 PGA Tour 2K25 (PS5), valued at 74.99 euros. The annual game for golf lovers, where competitions such as the PGA Championship, the US Open and the Open Championship have debuted this year. You can create a player and start a career where you can win tournaments and climb the rankings. You have the file in 3DGames. Monster Hunter Rise (PS4 and PS5), valued at 39.99 euros. A new installment of this popular saga, where you can face some of the most iconic monsters. You will also have new mechanics, new creatures and a story inspired by Japanese folklore. You have the analysis in ExtraLifeand the tab in 3DGames. Slime Rancher 2 (PS5), valued at 29.99 euros. A second installment of this title where you will have to travel through a mysterious land to capture and raise slimes, as well as carry out other activities. You have the file in 3DGames. The Elder Scrolls Online Collection: Gold Road (PS4 and PS5), valued at 19.99 euros. If you have never given this Elder Scrolls online game a chance, this is a great opportunity, since it is a pack with its main areas. In Xataka Basics | The best free games on Playstation 5 that you can play right now

If you have run out of free HDMI ports on your TV, this switch costs 15 euros and will solve the hassle for you

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Although most televisions come with three or four HDMI ports, on many occasions we can fall short if we want to connect one or more consoles, a computer or a Fire TV Stick. For this, the switches or switch They are quite practical accessories that allow us to add more devices, and they generally tend to have a fairly reasonable price. The Anker Switch HDMI is one of the most affordable within the brand, and its compact format is designed so that it does not take up space on the television cabinet. Its price is 14.99 euros and it is a switch two in onewhich allows us to connect two devices to a single HDMI port on the television. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A way to connect multiple devices to one HDMI port The switch They are usually compact accessories that incorporate several HDMI ports: two or more input to connect devices and one out dedicated to connecting it to the TV. This one from Anker allows you to connect two devices, such as one PlayStation 5 and one nintendo switch 2and switch between them by simply pressing the button at the top. This switch offers a ratio of up to 4K/60Hz and is compatible with HDR and with a wide assortment of devices, thus allowing us to connect a console such as PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, an Xbox Series, a projector or a computer, among others. On the other hand, if we are looking for extra comfort, there are many others switch which include more HDMI input ports and a remote control with which to switch between connected devices. One of the most interesting is the Ugreen HDMI Switch (29.99 euros), which in this case comes with three HDMI input ports and a remote control. In case you want to take full advantage of the features of the current generation consoles, Ugreen has another switch (19.59 euros) that offers a relationship 8K/60Hz and 4K/240Hzalthough in this case it only comes with two HDMI input ports. You may also be interested Anker 8K HDMI Cable at 60Hz, Ultra HD 4K HDMI Cable at 120Hz, 0.9m, Certified High Speed ​​48Gbps Cable with HDMI 2.1 and HDR, Compatible with PlayStation 5, Xbox, Samsung TVs and More The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Logitech K400 Wireless Touch Keyboard Plus for TV with a Multimedia Control and Touch Panel, HTPC Keyboard for TV connected to PC, Windows, Android, Chrome OS, Laptop, QWERTY Spanish – Black 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 | Juan Carlos Lopez and freepik (header), Anker In Xataka | This is the gaming tower that I would buy. The computers with the best quality-price ratio for gaming recommended by Xataka In Xataka | Best gaming laptops: which one to buy and eight recommended computers from 770 to 3,000 euros

We send you a free VPN so you can watch football for free. Sincerely, the US Department of State

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The US State Department has announced one of the most unusual moves in recent digital diplomacy: the launch of freedom.gov, a portal designed to help citizens in Europe and other regions circumvent content restrictions imposed by their own governments. Among many other implications, this would allow LaLiga’s indiscriminate IP blocking to be avoided, which would make freedom.gov a great way to watch football for free via IPTV. What irony. what has happened. The Trump administration, under the direction of Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, has announced this project that would offer VPN-type tools to route traffic through US servers. According to Reuterswhich cites three sources familiar with the plan, the launch was scheduled for the Munich Security Conference, but was delayed for reasons that the State Department has not clarified, although some of Rogers’ team’s own lawyers are known to have expressed internal reservations. Europe censored, and rightly so. The DSA The initiative is a frontal attack on the most recent European digital regulations, and especially the Digital Services Act (DSA). In the EU, large technology platforms face million-dollar fines if they do not quickly eliminate hate speech, disinformation or terrorist propaganda. For exampleX (formerly Twitter) received a fine of 120 million euros last December for non-compliance with the DSA. This protection of this type of speech was also clearly reflected in the efforts that Germany made in 2024: nearly 500 removal orders of content related to terrorism, which ended up resulting in more than 16,000 deleted contents. The freedom of expression argument. From the perspective of Washington—or more specifically, the Trump administration—these laws are a cover to silence conservative voices. Freedom.gov is like a shield under the umbrella of freedom of speech. One that would allow any citizen to access content blocked in their country. The domain, which was apparently registered on January 12, currently only displays the National Design Studio logo, the words “fly, eagle, fly” and a login form. The promise at the moment is that said platform will not track the activity of its users. The networks breathe fire. The comments on social networks have been numerous. Reception of the news mixes disbelief with sarcasm and the indignation. In Bluesky and Maston the most repeated criticism is that of double standards: the US trimmed funding the Tor project while at the same time building a portal for European citizens to access prohibited content. Renee DiResta, journalist for The Atlantic, summed it up well with the question: “Is the State Department going to set up a Nazi website?” Other comments opt for humor and compare this initiative with the 4chan platform (“4chan.gov”, they said some), known for its controversial lack of censorship. Transatlantic tension. Brussels maintains that its regulations protect European democracies from extremist propaganda, a strong argument considering that the continent experienced totalitarianism firsthand. That an ally like the United States actively encourages disobedience to local laws and invites Europeans to bypass blockades is disturbing. The paradox is notable: the same country that for years warned of foreign interference in its internal processes is now studying offering tools precisely to do the same in Europe and other regions. This affects Tebas and LaLiga. The measure could have a curious side effect and become the worst nightmare for Javier Tebas and LaLiga. Tebas, president of that organization, has for years led the most aggressive legal crusade in Europe against illegal streaming football broadcasts. He has been pressuring operators for years to indiscriminately block IPs corresponding to IPTV services. The effectiveness of these measures depends on a fundamental assumption: that users do not have easy, free and reliable access to a VPN. Thebes knows this, and in fact These days he has attacked two suppliers of this type of services alleging that new court orders force them to also block said IPs. Freedom.gov threatens precisely that scenario. If the portal ends up functioning as a secure tunnel to American servers, any fan of soccer broadcasts in Spain would have a couple of clicks away with a perfect tool to mask their IP, avoid their operator and transparently access the illegal IPTV channels that LaLiga was blocking with its legal efforts. Therefore, there would be no need to pay a subscription to NordVPN or its rivals or configure anything: just enter the freedom.gov domain. LaLiga Indian in November 2024 that in Spain “live sports content is pirated more than 25% above the European average”, which amplifies this potential impact. The irony is extraordinary. A foreign policy maneuver designed to promote the Trump Administration’s peculiar vision of freedom of expression could turn the Washington government into the ideal solution for “free football” in our country. Image | Chris Robert | Peter Glaser In Xataka | Football has become the anchor of operator subscriptions. And LaLiga is making more money than ever

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