limits

The Government of Spain has insisted that we do not exceed the speed limits. And it has a threat: jail

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At the moment it is a Bill presented in the Congress of Deputies but it is much more than that. It is confirmation that the Government will debate when a driver should go to jail in case of speeding. The PSOE’s proposal is to reduce this margin, which now requires driving through the city at more than the permitted speed of 60 km/h. 10km/h. It’s not much but it would be a substantial difference. Until now, a driver who exceeds the maximum speed allowed within the city by 60 km/h or more faces a prison sentence. Outside the city, the speed must exceed 80 km/h above the maximum permitted limit. With the change in regulations What the Government wants to carry outthe idea is that these limits are lowered by 10 km/h. That is, a driver has to face jail if he exceeds 50 km/h in the city and 70 km/h on roads outside of town. “Excessive permissiveness or laxity”. It’s like the Bill presented in the Congress of Deputies qualifies the current thresholds to determine what is a crime and what is not when we break the speed limits. Currently, the limits are as follows. City: Streets at 20 km/h: prison from 80 km/h Streets at 30 km/h: prison from 90 km/h Streets at 50 km/h: prison from 110 km/h Road outside the town: Road at 90 km/h: jail from 170 km/h Road at 100 km/h: jail from 180 km/h Road at 120 km/h: jail from 200 km/h The arguments. To promote this regulatory change, the Government indicates that the European Union is promoting changes to reduce road accidents. This is how it is understood more restrictive speed limits in much of Europe, although Germany continues to enjoy roads that lack them (up for debate today) and countries that They want to increase them to 150 km/h. But, in addition, the PSOE hides behind the fact that a 1% increase in speed has a 4% impact on its consequences. Therefore, the impact caused by an accident due to excess speed, which according to DGT accounts is present in 22% of accidents, is growing exponentially. Furthermore, the new wording emphasizes the consequences in the city, where excessive speed has more serious consequences on the health of vulnerable people such as pedestrians, cyclists, users of personal mobility vehicles and motorcyclists. Are there reasons? The truth is that excess speed is, behind distractions, the leading cause of accidents in our country. And its consequences are especially serious in the city. According to the DGT5% of pedestrians hit at 30 km/h die. At 50 km/h, the risk increases to 50% and at 80 km/h death is almost certain. And on the road, an impact at 120 km/h is considered to translate into a fall of a fourteenth floor. At 180 km/h the impact is equivalent to falling from a 36 story. What would happen to the drivers? At the moment, speeding Driving at more than 60 km/h in the city and more than 80 km/h outside of it are considered crimes, like those positive for alcohol and drugs. This means that the driver, in addition to the financial penalty, faces a prison sentence of three to six months that does not have to be served on the first occasion. Of course, although the sentence does not exceed two years, a judge has the power to decide whether to send the driver to prison. And also if it imposes a financial fine, which is calculated based on the damage caused or the risk to which it has subjected other drivers and traffic agents if no accident had occurred, from six to twelve months or work for the benefit of the community from thirty-one to 90 days. In addition, he would be deprived of his driving license for one to four years. Will it move forward? That is something that the Congress of Deputies now has to debate. Both the DGT and the Government have recently been promoting more restrictive measures against excessive driving. Under the direction of Pedro Sánchez, the penalties for mobile phone use have worsened and the obligation to have insurance and registration if you have a scooter. In the same way, there has been an attempt to promote a change in alcohol limits that would prevent a person from driving as soon as they had had a beer or a glass of wine. However, this reform is still up in the air. Photo | Max Angelo In Xataka | A town in France has managed to reduce the speed of its cars. Without radars or traffic lights or speed bumps

AI solves equations and chops code, but continues to crash with PDFs: the explanation shows its limits

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It’s probably happened to you. You upload a PDF to an artificial intelligence chatbot in the hope that it will summarize a report, extract a table or find a specific piece of information for you in a matter of seconds. And, sometimes, he succeeds. But other times, the result is disconcerting: mixed columns, footnotes embedded in the middle of the text, tables converted into an illegible block or answers that do not faithfully reflect what the document says. The paradox is evident. Systems that already demonstrate clear advances in mathematics and programming They keep stumbling upon something as everyday as a PDF. And there is more than a simple punctual failure. Change of mentality. Although for us it is a document with well-defined paragraphs, titles and tables, for the system that processes it the situation may be very different. PDF is, first and foremost, a way to visually describe how a page should be rendered. And when a chatbot like Gemini either ChatGPT If you try to work with it, you do not always access an ordered structure, but rather a set of graphical instructions that you must first reconstruct before you can respond coherently. And that difference is better understood when we look at how a PDF “saves” information. How you actually organize information. Unlike a web page, where the content follows a logical order defined in the code, a PDF can store text as independent fragments placed at specific positions on the page. Many times, the file retains coordinates and placement instructions, but not necessarily explicit relationships between one sentence and the next. This implies that the order in which the text “appears” when extracted does not always coincide with the order in which we read it. If your document includes multiple columns, tables, or overlapping elements, the system must figure out how they fit together. And that deduction is not always trivial. {“videoId”:”x9hhg44″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”The TRUTH of AI – This is how ChatGPT 4, DALL-E or MIDJOURNEY works 🤖 🧠 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”, “tag”:”webedia-prod”, “duration”:”1173″} What happens with HTML. On a web page, the content is organized in an explicit hierarchy– There are tags that indicate what a title is, what a paragraph is, what a table is, and how those elements relate to each other. This structure is part of the file itself and makes it easier for other systems to read, index and process it. In a PDF, as we have seen, that semantic layer may not exist or be clearly defined. Therefore, in practice, extracting information from a website tends to be a more predictable process, while doing it from a PDF is more complicated. So what about OCR? It is the first solution that comes to mind. If the problem is that the text is not well structured or even “drawn” like an image, optical character recognition should convert it into something machine readable. And in part it does. OCR has been used for decades to transform images of words into text, but converting an image to text is not the same as reconstructing the logic of the document. When there are varied elements, the system can recognize each word without knowing exactly how they fit together. The result is not a failure in reading characters, but in the organization of information. In Xataka Dario Amodei founded Anthropic because OpenAI didn’t take the risks of AI seriously. Now you are going to give in to those risks Why don’t we abandon PDF? The answer is more pragmatic than technological. As reported by The Verge citing the person responsible for the PDF Associationthe format became established precisely because it allows a document to look the same today as it would in ten or twenty years, regardless of the device or software with which it is opened. A web page can change depending on the browser, an editable sheet can be modified or overwritten, but a PDF maintains its appearance and visual integrity. That stability is precisely what lawyers, engineers, public administrations and any organization that must maintain reliable records need. The challenge is not to replace the format, but to learn to interpret it better. Images | Xataka with Nano Bana In Xataka | Three AIs clashed in ‘War Games’. 95% of them resorted to nuclear weapons and none ever surrendered (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 AI solves equations and chops code, but continues to crash with PDFs: the explanation shows its limits was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

Oasiz’s bankruptcy shows its limits

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Today the expression “retail apocalypse” It may sound like science fiction to us, but there was a time (not so long ago) in which it seemed a sentence imminent for traditional commerce. His logic was very simple: if people could buy whatever they wanted from whoever they wanted and from wherever they wanted with a ‘click’, why would they go to traditional shopping areas, with the costs that that entails? time has shown that neither e-commerce Neither COVID-19 has taken away our pleasure in going to shopping centers, but that does not mean that they do not seek to reinvent themselves. And in this attempt two clear strategies can be seen: gradually becoming ‘urban theme parks’ and spaces that pamper luxury and exclusivity. New times, new models. Today the ghost of “retail apocalypse” seems scared away (in reality the phenomenon always was more linked to the US than Spain, where the market is less saturated), but that does not mean that the shopping centers of 2026 can continue living with the model that popularized them 30, 20 or 10 years ago. After all, if we can buy anything on AliExpress or Amazon, why go to the nearest shopping center? If we can watch movies on Prime or Netflix, why are we going to take the car, eat a traffic jam and then fight in the parking lot to go to the movies? Who goes to the mall? The million dollar question. The sector has studies that detail the user profile who go to their centers: how much time they spend there, where they move from, the weight of foreigners, how far their “area of ​​influence” extends… A wide range of data in which one in particular stands out: customers spend more time where, in addition to food, clothing, appliances or any other merchandise, they offer us experiences. Beyond customer loyalty to their reference shopping center or the proximity factor, users seem particularly willing to spend time in the so-called “experience centers”those that have a differentiated offer and are sold as places to “live experiences.” With the watch in your hand. The above may sound like theory, but it is perfectly measured. a study published in 2024 by CBRE shows that, although we spend an average of 56 minutes in shopping centers in general, when we talk about “experience” areas, that figure shoots up to 71 or even 100. Double the time we invest in “convenience centers”, those that basically rely on supermarkets and focus on food. The report It also detected that the “Family&Fun” centers, aimed primarily at families, have a higher customer loyalty rate than the rest of the facilities. They are no longer just warehouses in which to shop or have a drink, they are living spaces where we make memories. What does that mean? That people no longer only go to shopping centers to buy some shoes, watch TV for the living room or fill the refrigerator. We can do this through other channels, even without leaving home, with our mobile phone. What we are looking for is the differentiating factor, an experience or a plus that compensates for traveling to the venue. It’s worth the effort for us. It allows the centers to retain their attractiveness as spaces in which to “have a good time” with friends or family, the value that made them popular in the 20th century. “More and more customers are looking for experiences and entertainment in shopping centers. Many are integrating experiences into retail to attract more users,” explained already in 2021 a manager of the La Vaguada Shopping Center. He is not the only one who thinks this way. In 2024 Diego Ramos published on LinkedIn a column who came to a similar conclusion: merchandise is no longer enough for us, now we want experiences, “socializing, having fun, creating memories.” Changing the anchor. In his opinion, entertainment parks have become “the new anchor” of shopping centers. If before these venues boasted the presence of large chains (Fnac, Mediamarkt, Ikea) as their star dish, today they advertise other hooks: surf pools or diving, zip lines, climbing walls, skateparks, ice rinks, wind tunnels, escape rooms… “Visitors expect to live experiences, it is not enough for them to just buy, that is why they have the digital market,” they comment from Caleido to elEconomista. It is the same philosophy that once led shopping centers to go from having little more than hypermarkets to including cinemas and bowling alleys… only multiplied by a thousand. Theme parks and luxury. The result is a kind of urban theme parks of which examples abound, both of complexes in progress and of others planned: X Madrid, Oasiz (Madrid), Breogán Park (A Coruña), Infinity Valencia either Nasas Madridto name a few. Other commercial spaces also opt for another way of offering a plus to the user: exclusivity, luxury. This is the case, for example, of LaFinca Grand Caféwhich is advertised as a space with “premium services” and “haute cuisine”, or McArthurGlen Designer Outelt Málagawhich opened its doors several years ago with premium brands. The bet on exclusivity it’s not new either (it is nothing that has not been seen in spaces such as Las Roazas Village, La Roca Village, L’illa Diagonal or Galerías Canalejas), but it also helps some shopping centers to find their differentiated place. Not only that. It also allows them to make it easier for them when it comes to capturing a certain customer profile, visitors who come to Spain to practice “shopping tourism”a profile in which Americans and Chinese stand out. The sword of Damocles. It may seem like an unimportant issue, but getting the strategy right is key in a sector that is undergoing transformation and increasingly competitive. Shopping centers may not have survived the “retail apocalypse” and continue to attract thousands of users (their employers estimate that during the first half of 2025 their sales increased by 6% and customer traffic by 3.4%), but success is not guaranteed. Not at all. That even … Read more

The housing crisis in the Pyrenees opens the debate on the limits of camping

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“I am a temporary worker and I come to work in the Tena Valley. The rents are 800 euros and I am not going to share a flat. I prefer to live in the van with my cat (…) I don’t understand why they focus on me when I don’t break the regulations.” The words are those of an indignant woman. One to which the Civil Guard demands movement when it understands that it is camping illegally. One that, if what is said in the video is true, is completely right and the regulations are on its side. What happened? The video is brought to X by a user of the social network and in it you see a woman who, between irony and indignation, explains that she works as a seasonal worker in the Tena Valley (Huesca), that she lives in her van and that the Civil Guard is asking her to leave because, supposedly, she is camping. The video shows the conversation between the woman and one of the agents. He defends that “it’s been going on for a month and a half now” and that “that can be considered camping.” She, for her part, alleges that she does not take any items outside and that she also moves, which the agent also acknowledges. “Rents are 800 euros”. In her video, the protagonist points out that the cost of housing is very high in the Tena Valley and that she does not want to share a flat. “I prefer to live in the van with my cat,” he emphasizes. The truth is that this enclave right next to the Pyrenees is very tense. In fact, it was only a few months ago that he was born. Decent Housing Viello Aragón in defense of access to housing in this Aragonese area. They point out that the area is full of tourists. The problem is not just a matter of underused second homes. The group points out that the European funds dedicated to sustainable tourism are causing the attraction of more and more visitors with the conversion into apartments and houses as rural complexes, which worsens the conflict. They defend that it should be stopped the delivery of new licenses for tourist use, they propose the creation of a public housing pool, declaring the region as a stressed area in order to control prices and punish the owners of more than four residential properties who have empty homes. The final objective is to facilitate access to housing and so that the economy can diversify so as not to live solely on tourism. Yes, the law is on your side (sort of). The truth is that if the author of the video complies with what she says, the law is on her side. As explained by the colleagues of Motorpassionthere are no regulations that specify a maximum time in which a person can spend the night in their car. Because camping in a place not authorized for it is illegal but spending the night is allowed. The PROT Instruction 2023/14 It is the one that collects these differences. It states that “parking is not camping” as long as: That the vehicle, with the engine stopped, is only in contact with the ground through the wheels (stabilizing legs or any other device is not used, except for chocks, provided for by the General Traffic Regulations). That the vehicle does not occupy more surface area than what it occupies when closed, that is, without the deployment of projectable elements, chairs, tables, etc., elements that can invade a surface larger than that delimited by the perimeter of the vehicle, understood as the plan projection of the same. That the vehicle does not emit any type of fluids or noises to the outside. One but. And then, the instruction also states the following: All of the above will be understood without prejudice to the powers of the town councils, through their municipal regulations, to limit or regulate, without discrimination based on the type of vehicle, the stopping and parking points under criteria of physical organization of traffic, commerce or environmental criteria, or with the purpose of favoring the arrival of this type of motorhome tourism, establishing for this purpose, parking zones or areas or, where appropriate, camping. Likewise, the regional regulations that have been approved or could be approved for the purpose of tourism promotion in the national territory will be taken into account. to promote a new type of accommodation that in any case will coexist with the full application of national legislation on traffic and road safety and especially the regulations relating to stopping and parking maneuvers. The matter here is a little more delicate because the video does not explain the situation regarding any of these concepts. What the instruction makes clear is that the City Council can delimit where a motorhome can park. In the images it appears that the van is located on the outskirts of a town but it is not clear whether or not the vehicle may be parked there, specifically. Without knowing the municipality, we also do not know if the town’s mobility ordinance imposes a maximum parking time. In the case of not wanting to park in the town, the situation is more delicate. In this case, regional regulations require you to spend the night in an area expressly authorized for this purpose since the Tena Valley is a protected environmental space. What do we get clear? In a municipality, a person can spend the night without any problem in their car or caravan as long as the vehicle is parked correctly and they do not take belongings and objects outside (from chairs to awnings). In that case, the driver is considered to be camping and this can only be done in an area authorized for this. Therefore, living inside a van and making life in it is not illegal as long as no noise or fluids are generated that are emitted to the outside. … Read more

A blackout has reminded Waymo where its limits are

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More than 10 years ago, a user named karmafrappuccino posted a meme that would go down in the history of memes (if there is any history of memes) with the name confused Travolta. Since then, the image of Vincent Vega with a coat in his hand and looking from one side to the other completely clueless in Mia Wallace’s living room has been used countless times. Last weekend, the Waymo of San Francisco experienced their own Confused Travolta. Detained. That’s how the Waymo cars ended up last weekend in San Francisco. Stopped, without reacting and with the emergency lights on. The service of autonomous driverless cars that circulate through the American city completely collapsed after a blackout left the traffic lights in part of the city without service. In images like the ones in this video Up to five Waymo cars can be seen completely stopped at an intersection haphazardly. Three of them are on the right side, with the emergency lights active, but another two have stopped completely in the middle of an intersection, making life difficult for the rest of the drivers. For hours. In The New York Times They report that tow truck employees spent hours picking up Waymo cars scattered around the city. The blackout, which had affected some 130,000 residents of the city, ended up causing chaos in the streets after Waymo cars will block intersections and streets. The company confirmed that it ended up stopping the service. They point out in the newspaper that they contacted the company from the city to demand that they stop the service since it was creating even more problems in traffic. Social networks show videos and photographs of Completely collapsed intersections or streets for Waymo’s self-driving cars. Click on the image to go to the original tweet Click on the image to go to the original tweet But why? Well, that’s the big doubt. Because experts consulted by The New York Times They point out that cars should be prepared to save situations like this. In fact, they clarify that it is not unusual for San Francisco traffic lights to have poor visibility or for GPS signals to be lost and cars to work correctly. The company has clarified that if a traffic light is off, the car understands it as a Stop with exit in four directions. That is, the car should have continued moving forward when the conditions of the intersection permitted it. Something that, We refer to the videosit didn’t happen. The problem is that cars seem to be trained to deal with turning off a traffic light but not all traffic lights. They explain in The Verge that the car sends a video and images to a human when it finds itself in an exceptional situation that it does not know how to deal with and it shows it the way. The problem is that, in the event of a blackout, it is difficult for the available bandwidth to allow this data to be sent. Click on the image to go to the original tweet The Tesla case. Given the chaos caused by Waymo’s robotaxis, Elon Musk did not take long to score the goal. The reason is that the autonomous driving system has been built on neural networks that They use the data of millions of drivers to show the car how it should behave. In fact, the company itself, in one of the updates to the FSD, its most advanced driving assistance package, removed 300,000 lines of code in which he explicitly explained to the car how it should behave. Instead, it is the images and data captured by the millions of cars on the road that show each unit what it should do. This has its drawbacks, such as a car decelerates without reason when encountering a police vehiclebut it has many advantages when it comes to smoother driving. In addition, it is easier to face unforeseen events because with so many cars on the streets it is relatively easy for someone to have faced an unexpected situation, whatever it may be. Unforeseen. Currently, the biggest enemy of autonomous driving is precisely this: face the unexpected. And it is not the first time that autonomous cars cause images in which streets or intersections collapse due to communication failures or misinterpreting signs and warnings. For example, one of the cars Cruise ended up running from the police because he didn’t know how he should act when faced with the emergency lights of the car that was chasing him. The car, on that occasion, had to be turned off remotely. And widespread discontent. Although robotaxis have ended up becoming another part of the San Francisco landscape, to the point of being a tourist attraction, since these services were launched they have provoked all kinds of protests and actions by neighbors against them. Some as simple as putting a cone on the hood. And autonomous cars have crossed the line of what city residents are willing to suffer. The crossings collapsed due to a blackout have been the latest case but only a few weeks ago a Waymo car ran over a well-known cat in one of the neighborhoods in which they operate. Reactions to the case showed that, although a self-driving car is involved in fewer accidents, we are more critical of the system than when the car is operated by a human. Not to mention the Cruise case, which ended up losing his license (although he later recovered it before abandon permanently) for being involved, among others, in an incident in which a neighbor was run over and the car instead of stopping He drove over her and parked on her. It was also the case that the failure in one of their cars caused the delay of emergency services in a fire where one person lost their life. Photo | Waymo and Georg Eiermann In Xataka | I have tried a fully autonomous taxi. This is what it’s like to … Read more

The new alcohol law limits bars from placing beer chairs or umbrellas. And now millionaires fear losses

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We’ve been seeing it all our lives. Bars that fill their terraces with umbrellas, napkin rings, tables, chairs, sideboards and other furniture that promotes beer brands. For decades this advertising support was a boon for business. Now the hospitality industry fears that it will become a poisoned gift. The reason: the new law on alcohol and minors promoted by the Government and which already has the endorsement of the Council of Ministers wants to snip that kind of promotion. The locals calculate that the loss of that advertising support it will cost them millions. Blow to the hospitality industry? That’s what seems to fear the sector as a result of the law promoted by the Government to prevent alcohol consumption among young people. Although the regulation has not yet been finalized, the group is already managing a study which warns that it will seriously affect the finances of bars, restaurants, cafes, pubs and other hospitality establishments in Spain. The reason: the bill of Health seriously restricts any advertising sponsorship related to alcohol. And that is a problem for businesses that have been filling for years with awnings, tables, chairs, ashtrays, umbrellas, napkin holders, refrigerators and furniture in general on which beer brands are advertised. What exactly does the standard say? He billwhich can be consulted in the official Congress bulletin and received in march The Government’s endorsement sets some limits on advertising in the sector. Its article 26 is clear about this: “Any direct, indirect or covert form of commercial communication of alcoholic beverages is prohibited, or of products that imitate or simulate being one, or of non-alcoholic beverages that share their brand and differential features with those of alcoholic beverages, including the commercial name, corporate name, symbols or brands of the people or companies that produce said beverages, as well as their distributors when they are exclusively associated with alcoholic beverages on public roads, or places visible from them.” Does it clarify anything else? Yes. The law differentiates between two types of spaces: the ‘most sensitive’ and the rest, where the advertising restriction will be somewhat more flexible. “However, advertising limited to the trade name, corporate name and identifying brands or symbols of the producing companies may be permitted in a perimeter that is more than 150 linear meters from the access to educational centers that teach early childhood education, basic education, post-compulsory secondary education and elementary artistic education, health centers, social and socio-health services, parks and places for children’s leisure.” How will it be applied? In the statement March in which it reports the approval of the Council of Ministers to the Bill, the Ministry of Health clarifies, however, that it will allow the advertising of fermented drinks with less than 0.5% alcohol. Mónica García’s team also points out that the veto will not be immediate: it will come into force twelve months after the publication of the law in the BOE and will not affect “those situations that already existed before that moment”, which suggests that it will not affect the furniture that already exists. A different thing is when it comes time to renew it. Will it affect the sector that much? It seems so. At least that is what a Comprehensive Economic Analysis (AEI) report indicates. advance by The Economist. The analysis, prepared for the Spanish Hospitality and Brewery associations and which is having a notable impact, ensures that the loss of sponsorships from alcohol brands will be quite expensive for bars and restaurants. To be more precise, AEI estimates that it will cost the sector up to 1.7 billion euros. The estimate is based on two figures: a direct cost of around 600 million euros and a drop in sales of between 1,080 and 1,680 million. He AEI report It doesn’t stay there. It also warns that the measure will affect between 8,000 and 10,200 jobs and will be felt beyond bars and cafes, with a reduction in the contribution to the national GDP that it estimates between 900 and 1,176 million euros. The study also suggests that the money that alcohol manufacturers will stop investing in advertising furniture will probably be directed towards other channels, away from small hoteliers and their businesses. Why this suspicion? Although Health has clarified that the measure would still take time to come into effect and will not affect “existing” facilities, the AEI report points out that its wording leaves little room for doubt: “In practice it implies the removal of logos, signs, chairs, tables, umbrellas or napkin rings with beer brands from thousands of bars and restaurants in the country.” His estimate is completed with another from Hospitality of Spain that gives an idea of ​​the scope of the measure. According to their data, of a total of 130,000 bars and cafes in the country, between 70 and 80% incorporate elements sponsored by breweries. Will it affect everyone equally? “If approved, the new law will practically eliminate all this support, forcing the brand’s advertising to be withdrawn, which will have an estimated cost of 12,000 euros per store,” remark the study. The penalty that could be felt especially strongly in areas of Spain where hoteliers work in smaller markets and with less room for maneuver. The Economist slide that about 20% of the municipalities that now have only one bar (235) could see their doors close. Images | Guillaume Flament (Flickr) and Ccalm Film Festival-María del Mar López Morales (Flickr) In Xataka | From prohibiting purchases to prohibiting consumption: the changes in the recently approved draft reform of the anti-smoking law

variable limits at night

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Catalonia has discovered variable speed limits. And it is beginning to exploit them to solve problems of different kinds. This alternative to a single and inflexible maximum speed is applied in other European countries but has not taken root in our country. Until now. The last place to try it is C-31. Pilot test. For now, it’s an experiment. An interesting examination that may define the future of some other roads in Catalonia. Because, at the moment, it does not seem that the DGT is in the business of applying the measure in the rest of Spain. Since yesterday, Monday, October 27, drivers have to slow down at a maximum of 70 km/h between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. as it passes through Castelldefels (and Gavà). The test aims to verify to what extent the noise impact can be reduced on a road that is very close to the homes in these municipalities. To do this, two sound level meters have been installed that will collect data along the six kilometers in which the cars have to slow down. At 70 km/h. As we said, this is the speed at which cars will have to travel at night. The rest of the day, traffic will move at a maximum of between 90 and 100 km/h, the limits that until now were inflexible in this section. That is, whoever maintains the original speed faces a fine of 100 euros without withdrawal of points. The test is temporary. Next December 4th The usual maximum speeds will be returned and, from then on, drivers will be able to return to their 90-100 km/h. That will be when the data will be analyzed and it will be studied whether it is worth applying new measures. It is not the first case. According to the DGTapplying variable speed limits can help reduce accidents by 10% but, at the moment, this measure has not been applied in any case. The system is simple, using the road lights, the maximum speed varies up or down. The system is widely used in Germany. Especially in the famous sections without maximum speed of the Autobahn. And, really, these sections can have a limit. There, the limits may vary depending on the weather, the hours of the day (as in the previous case) or depending on the traffic that is concentrated during peak hours. This last case is, for example, that of the AP-7. The Generalitat of Catalonia is studying applying sections with variable speed limits to try to reduce the risks due to the increase in traffic registered since the tolls were lifted. It has even been proposed that in some cases a maximum of 60 km/h be maintained. The noise. It is a problem that has been studied by some institutions for some time. Most of the time it is a problem that is addressed first in the municipalities where the noise of an engine (especially motorcycles) and the sound of music is more problematic than the rolling of the car itself. However, what is addressed here is the noise generated by the passing of cars. It is estimated that a car traveling at 70 km/h generates 3 dB less on average than a car traveling at 120 km/h. It must be taken into account, however, that the growth is logarithmic and the impact of those 3 dB is much greater in the jump from 77 to 80 dB than in the jump from 17 to 20 dB, to give an example. In this study It is noted that at night the noise generated by cars is lower because the traffic is also lower. However, the calm at night highlights this noise and, therefore, moving the focus away from the noise (in this case we are talking about an alternative route further away from the neighbors) has a greater impact during the day than at night. And more impact. Furthermore, beyond the fact that rolling noise is perceived more clearly at night, the WHO also recommends that the noise rates to which we subject our body be lower at night. This is because the impact on rest is greater to the point of recommending that the noise source does not exceed 45 dB. However, it is estimated that the busiest roads They constantly move between 75 and 80 dB. Figures that put the health of those who live in the surrounding area at risk. In 2021, it was estimated that excess noise had an effect on European income accounts. 147,000 million euros per yearbeing considered the second source of environmental risk for citizens, only behind atmospheric pollution. Photo | Castelldefels Town Hall and Google Maps In Xataka | What electric cars sound like: this is the sound chosen by manufacturers in their acoustic warning for pedestrians

Spotify is dealing with an avalanche of songs made with AI. So you have decided to react to mark the limits

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You open Spotify, you run with a song that you cannot stop listening and, nevertheless, the name of the “artist” sounds at all. You wonder if there is a band behind or if it is a Track generated by AIand the doubt is not trivial: the trained ear may detect it, but for millions of listeners the border has become blurred. With generators like Suno either You raising their creation quality, catalogs are filled and the context matters. This week, Spotify announced New policies to stop three fronts: “Slop”, impersonations and transparency on the use of AI. The company states that it wants to protect artists and prevent the public from feeling deceived, without prohibiting responsible use of these tools. In just a few months, music generators have become accessible tools capable of producing thousands of subjects ready to be uploaded to streaming platforms. We do not talk about master compositions, but about songs that meet the minimum to sneak into mass catalogs. The result is an avalanche that makes it difficult to distinguish between genuine proposals and simple algorithmic exercises. For stamps and artists, this saturation not only generates confusion among listeners, it also threatens to dilute income in a system where each reproduction counts to distribute royalties. Spotify’s plan against music made with AI Spotify frames its new rules in a simple idea: music has always been crossed by technology, from the multipist tapes to auto-tune. The current difference is that artificial intelligence evolves at a speed that generates uncertainty. In this scenario, the platform states that it wants to reinforce transparency and shield the confidence of listeners, while respecting the freedom of artists to decide how to incorporate these tools into their creative process. One of the most sensitive spotlights for Spotify is the impersonation of identity. The company has hardened its rules and clarifies that it will not allow songs that reproduce the voice of an artist without its explicit authorization. This includes voice clones generated with artificial intelligence, “Deepfakes” and any unauthorized vocal replica. In addition, new measures are tested with distributors to prevent music from foreign profiles, an increasingly common attack. The objective is that musicians can denounce quickly and maintain control over their own artistic identity. Another front that the platform wants to stop is spam. Spotify explains that some users try to manipulate the system by uploading songs of just 30 seconds to accumulate reproductions with Right to paymentor repeating the same theme with minimal changes in metadata. To combat it, in the coming months will deploy a filter that will identify this type of practices and stop recommending them. The company ensures that the measure is necessary to protect the distribution of royalties and remember that in the last 12 months it eliminated 75 million fraudulent tracks. The third leg of the plan is transparency. Spotify collaborates with DDEX, the agency responsible for setting standards in the music industry, to create a metadata system that reflects the role of AI in each song. The objective is that the credits indicate if artificial intelligence has been used in the voice, in the instruments or in the production, so that the listener knows clearly. As reported by the company, 15 seals and distributors have already promised to adopt this standard, although for now there is no release date. The real impact of the new rules will be measured over time. For artists, reinforcement against impersonation and spam can translate into a fairer environment to compete for attention and royalties. For listeners, promise is a clearer experiencewith credits that allow distinguishing which part of a song has been generated by Ia. Even so, there is uncertainty about its scope: from the possibility of errors in automatic detection to the difficulty that stamps and distributors adapt their processes quickly and homogeneously. Spotify will probably continue working after this announcement. The effectiveness of the filters and the adoption of the new credits will depend on the industry as a whole move in the same direction. AI will continue to evolve and new methods are likely to make control systems. In that scenario, the company will have to demonstrate that its measures not only slow the abuses, but also help maintain the confidence of the listeners and the value of artists’ work. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 | @felirbe In Xataka | OpenAi wants to bill as much as Microsoft in five years. For this

These are the limits of use of Google’s artificial intelligence in its free and payment version

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Let’s tell you What are Gemini’s limits announced by Google itself. With this, you can know how much you can use each of the functions depending on whether you are using a free version of Gemini or if you opt for any of the payment. Thus, you can know from the requests to Gemini 2.5 Pro that you can make up to date to the research reports thoroughly or the generation and Image editionbecause the number of times you can do everything depends on the version you have on this artificial intelligence. These are Gemini’s limits Free gemini Gemini with Google Ai Pro Gemini with Google Ai Ultra Use of model 2.5 Pro Up to 5 requests per day Up to 100 requests per day. Up to 500 requests per day. Use of 2.5 flash model Unlimited use Unlimited use Unlimited use Context size 32,000 tokens 1 million tokens 1 million tokens Audio summaries UP TO 20 AUDIO AUDIO AT DAY UP TO 20 AUDIO AUDIO AT DAY UP TO 20 AUDIO AUDIO AT DAY Thorough investigations Up to 5 reports per month with 2.5 flash Up to 20 reports per month with 2.5 Pro Up to 200 reports per month with 2.5 Pro Deep Think There is no There is no Up to 10 requests a day with a context of 192,000 tokens Image generation and editing Up to 100 images a day Up to 1000 images a day Up to 1000 images a day Scheduled actions There is no Limited access with 2.5 Deep Think Limited access with 2.5 Deep Think Video generation There is no Up to 3 videos a day with I see 3 fast Up to 5 videos a day with I see 3 Anticipated access to functions There is no Priority access to some new functions Priority access to some new functions Price €/month € 21.99/month € 274.99/month As you can see in the table, there are some functions you can’t find in the free version of Google Gemini, such as the scheduled actions, the generation of videos with I see 3or Deep Think functions. Nor will you receive new functions as soon as you will do if you have a payment version. But there is also good news, and it is that Google is very generous with the generation and editing of images. Free AI users can create or edit up to 100 images a day, which gives a lot of room to play with those functions in which Gemini stands out. For the rest, as expected, the free version has less context tokens, that is, it has less capacity to remember things when it comes to responding to you, although it has enough for most tasks. Audio summaries are the same for all platforms. In Xataka Basics | Gemini Image Editor: 16 forms and tricks to squeeze Nano-Banana with Google’s artificial intelligence

a cheese so extreme in its preparation that the European Union had to put limits

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Few more fascinating things for the human being than that indicated as “forbidden” and “dangerous.” If we also talk about a gastronomic product that comes with the Italian seal and that after it there are hundreds of myths and legends, we have the breeding ground to raise the product to the object of worship for the most exquisite and adventurous palates. There are many good cheese storiesbut none like that of most dangerous cheese in the world and its maturation process. Casu Marzu. The truth is that cheese is, in essence, fermented and aging milk. It happens that the process goes through controls to achieve adequate balance between bacterial activity and the quality and taste of cheese. The variety in this process and the different traditional approaches to elaborate it is what makes us have so many types. Yet, None approaches the Casu Marzu processwhose translation already gives us a track, “rotten cheese.” This Italian cheese from Sardinia has a peculiarity. It is created with the help of very special worms or larvae, creatures that remain alive during the maturation and fermentation process and, most importantly, when we open it to taste it. So, it is time to close your eyes and expect the portion not to reach the mouth with a living larva. The fly and cheese. It We count a long time ago And it serves to give context to the story of Casu Marzu. Humans have been eating dairy products like cheese almost 6,000 years and, in essence, we owe everything to a fly. And it is that the fermentation process, key in the delicacy, occurred first thanks to the role played by the fruit fly. Apparently, the casual encounter between the insect and a cube of fresh milk flowed into a new type of yeast thanks to which raw milk became a different organic compound. The mixture of two different substances and yeasts worked the miracle. However, already a difference from most fermentation processes of cheeses, Casu Marzu has a more “narrow” relationship with the fruit fly. Very active larvae. The larvae come from the Piophila Casei cheese fly. Always in motion, they are able to jump up to 15 centimeters in the air. In fact, it is considered harmful in food industries. The contradiction is given because as an detritivorous, it can be very useful in forensic investigations and, for cheese addicts, they are fundamental for the creation of Casu Marzu. Fermentation process. The cheesers begin the process of the famous delicacy by cutting a small hole in a sheep milk cheese wheel and leaving it outside, maturing. Flies (the Piophila Casei) make their appearance and enter the opening to put their eggs. Once the larvae hatch inside, their excretions decompose the fats and proteins of the cheese, creating a gentle and creamy texture. At this point, when a sticky liquid known as tears is filtered through the peel, the cheese is “at its point” ready to eat. The resulting delicacy is spicy and penetrating flavorsimilar to maturo gorgonzola, with an acid touch that leaves the trail of the larvae. Finally and not least, to know if we are facing the true Casu Marzu we must make a clean cut, if we find a mass of worms that twist, everything is going well. Cream of Casu Marzu Danger: myiasis. If we ignore the larvae, the creamy piece of cheese may seem tempting. In fact, it is for many adventurers. However, we must, approach the piece with some caution. As The Science of Cheese points out“The worms that jump cheese are able to do it a few centimeters, so consumers are recommended to protect the eyes” when the wheel opens. More risks. If by chance we end up engulfing any of these living larvae, there is another danger. According to the University of FloridaThey are often cited as one of the most likely causes of intestinal myiasis. This condition, certainly disgusting, occurs basically when the worms are installed in our digestive system. There, in our intestine, they make “mischief.” “Intestinal myiasis occurs when eggs or fly larvae previously deposited in food are ingested and survived in the gastrointestinal tract,” They explain the centers for disease control and prevention. “Some infested patients have been asymptomatic; others have had abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.” The most dangerous. For all this, the appellation is not trivial. The marzu casu that contains larva It is enjoyed for thousands of years in Sardinia. Cheese, prohibited in many parts of Europe, can reach really high prices. In Sardinia the kilo can be found for more than 50 euros. The trick to ingest it. By the way, there is a formula in the event that you want to taste a piece of cheese with the greatest assurances. Yes, many people take risks and eat live worms, but alternately, They can be crushed to kill them and then spread the cheese About bread. We can also seal a piece in a plastic bag with closure. When the sound of worms stops, it is time for tasting. And if it doesn’t even convince you, you can always go to the super or to the market and ask for the cheese that you like so much and that does not bring surprises. Image | Sarah Gregg, Shardan In Xataka | France has made its cheeses Brie and Camembert two national symbols. Now face your disappearance In Xataka | The origin of Manchego cheese is partly a mystery. An XI sheep will help us clear unknowns *An earlier version of this article was published in July 2024

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