Open

They have five days to open themselves to rivals

by

If there is something that the European Commission does not like at all, it is that technology companies use their power to create monopolies. It takes years actively fighting these practices with chases and historical fines. The objective is to promote competition and when Meta introduced your AI chatbot on WhatsApp, came under the scrutiny of the Commission. Now, have taken a historic decision: order Meta to open WhatsApp to any rival chatbot. And that opens the door, for example, for a Mistral or a ChatGPT to sneak into WhatsApp. In short. This Tuesday, June 9, the European Commission ordered the American giant to restore free access to WhatsApp for competing AI assistants. It is about reversing a situation that Meta has been making more and more complicated for the competition since October 2025. Today, we require Meta to restore access to WhatsApp for competing AI assistants while we investigate whether the restrictions may infringe EU competition rules – Teresa Ribera, European Commission Previously, other companies had access to the WhatsApp API, but Meta changed its conditions to block rival AI services on the platform, something that began to be applied on January 15 of this year. Their own AI chatbot had arrived and they didn’t want anyone stepping on their toes. The Commission did not begin to investigate this out of nowhere, but as a result of complaints from several AI assistant companies who reported that Meta was taking advantage of its position of power and dominance of messaging platforms to ‘sneak’ a single chatbot to everyone: its own. Historical. Meta has five business days to restore that access to rivals and, almost as important as the measure for the user (who will be able to choose which AI system they use in WhatsApp), is the way in which it has been taken. Because it represents the first antitrust precautionary measure that the European Union establishes since 2019 because the investigation has not really ended. The competition commissioner of the European Union, Teresa Ribera, pointed out that this precautionary order is necessary so that competition between companies is fair in these rapidly evolving markets. He assures that, if such a measure is not taken, the damage would be “almost impossible to repair” and assures that they continue to review whether the restrictions that Meta applied may violate EU competition laws… or not. That is to say, the European Commission has been investigating this case for six months and they are not finished, but they have already made the decision to order WhatsApp to open its API. Meta’s Response. Not only the European Commission got involved: Meta was already being investigated for the same reason by the Italian competition authority. Since then, the company has taken some actions to prevent an order like this from arriving, offering access to its rivals for a fee and, just a few weeks ago, offering free access to the API up to a certain threshold and, when they exceeded it, starting to charge for its use. Neither the complainants nor the Commission accepted these measures because they considered that, in practice, it was exactly the same as what Meta was already applying: it was not free access, but, in addition, you had to pay to join the platform. “This will allow free access to OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world. It is a regulatory overreach subsidized by the many European companies that pay” – Meta Spokesperson Obviously, Meta is not amused by this situation one bit, pointing that the EU is using its power to allow some of the world’s largest companies to use its (paid) WhatsApp Business product for free. They claim that Europe is playing along with OpenAI. Whistleblowers, such as The Interaction Company, do seem satisfied. Now…what. Well there are three options. Or Meta relents and opens its API so that anyone can enter WhatsApp as an AI chat (like when Google in its browser It asks us which search engine we want to use by default Instead of assuming we want yours, go) or pay a fine. That fine is not small: up to 10% of your global annual turnover if you do not comply with these provisional measures. The third option is for Meta to appeal the precautionary order before the courts of the European Union. The Apple thing. As we say, the decision of the European Commission is historic because it is a precautionary measure while they ensure that they must continue studying the case. They give Meta only five days to open its tools and let the competition ‘sneak’ into their home and then to wait to see if the decision is ratified or if the Commission backs down. In any case, it is something that comes just when Apple has once again raised its tone against Europe after the presentation of the new Siri AI by announcing that many of its functions will not be available on iPadOS 27 and on iOS 27 due to EU antitrust policies. But, as with Meta, it is not a fight for privacy (as Apple wants to sell), but rather one for control of its platform and its product so that there is no competition and no one else can play. In Xataka | No, WhatsApp Meta AI cannot be deactivated, but this way you can make it bother you as little as possible

open a ghost road that almost no one uses

by

A mousetrap. This is how José Manuel Tofiño, mayor of Illescas, defines the A-42 highway that connects Madrid with Toledo. The road runs collapsed every day but next to it it has the most underused toll road in Spain. The claim is obvious. The answer, so far, too. Maddening. It is one of the terms that best defines the journey that thousands of drivers make every day on the A-42 towards Madrid. And in the direction of Toledo. Because back and forth, morning and afternoon, there is only one reality on the A-42 highway: it is clogged. Although neighborhood and political complaints are once again on the table, congestion on the A-42 has been critical for years. Already in 2020the representatives of the Popular party of the Community of Madrid and the affected municipalities of Toledo demanded measures from the Executive. Now they are the PSOE politicians those who demand solutions. What’s happening? Simply, the A-42 is clogged daily while the A-41, which runs parallel, is empty. According to data collected by The Countrythe A-42 has an average traffic flow of up to 90,000 vehicles per day at some points, while the payment option barely exceeds 2,000 vehicles. The figure has even been growing in recent years given that the neighboring free highway is completely overflowing. And a little over a decade ago the cars that passed through the A-41 was less than a thousand a day. The situation has even been causing for years delays on adjacent roads. National roads that drivers try to use as a means of escape from the highway. Because? Although the A-42 has been living in an extreme situation for years, the problem has become entrenched in recent years. The A-42 is a road that connects Madrid and Toledo passing through La Sagra. It is an area close to Madrid known for cities where a good part of the workers go to Madrid daily, such as Illescas and Yeles (Toledo) or Torrejón de la Calzada and Parla (Madrid). Next to the city, the road runs through Getafe. A good part of those workers left Madrid during the real estate bubble before 2008 looking for larger houses and at more affordable prices. However, the current housing crisis has once again caused Madrid residents look favorably on these towns south of the city. The cranes, for example, have returned to Seseñaclassic bubble burst image. But, in addition, together with Illescas, a logistics center has been promoted that has become one of the great merchandise hubs in the center of the peninsula. This has also triggered the transport of heavy vehicles, which complicates circulation even more. Precisely, The proximity of the A-42 is one of the great attractions to carry the goods there on the way to Madrid. make it free. Therefore, in their latest claims, regional politicians ask that the A-41 be opened to all vehicles to alleviate the situation on the A-42. The measure they propose is very simple: if one road is empty and the other is collapsed, let it be liberalized. The problem is that the concession for the A-41 does not expire until 2040. At the moment, the road is completely free from 0:00 to 6:00, which is an alternative to the first to hit the road. However, local voices They attribute this to the intention of the concessionaire company to save workers’ salaries and emphasize that at that time it is not a problem to travel on the A-42 since it is first thing in the morning when it gets stuck. Or at least public transportation. In his report, in The Countrycollect the testimony of Alberto Blázquez, a 28-year-old computer scientist and resident of Palomeque (near the A-42) who takes his car to Illescas and, from there, takes a train to Fuenlabrada (Madrid) and makes a transfer to get to Atocha and thus ends up arriving at his workplace. This is what some workers have opted for when they see that it takes the same time by public transport as by car. What they propose is that the Cercanías network be expanded to Illescas to facilitate the train connection with the city and that bus connections be improved, which right now, other voices point out in that same report, are also overwhelmed since they left Madrid. These claims, as well as the construction of a third lane from Parla, are the requests that residents and Madrid residents have been demanding for years. So far, the only thing that has changed is that the problem is even more serious. Photo | Miguel Angel Masegosa Martínez and DGT In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic

Airbus had a single center in the world to convert commercial aircraft into military tankers. Now another one will open in Seville

by

Airbus has chosen Seville to install its second global conversion center for the A330 MRTT, the best-selling tanker and military transport aircraft on the market outside the United States. The San Pablo plant will thus become the twin of the Getafe plant, until now the only one in the world capable of transforming A330 commercial aircraft into its multirole military version. We made the announcement during the opening of the ADM Sevilla 2026 fair and the facilities are expected to be operational at the end of 2027. Why it matters. The A330 MRTT is experiencing a sweet moment, as it accumulates some 91 orders from 19 countries and controls 90% of the world market share, excluding the United States. The war in ukrainethe escalation of military spending in Europe and the growing need for tanker aircraft to extend the air forces’ operating margin have triggered demand for a model that until now was assembled at a rate limited by its single-plant capacity. Add Seville will allow you to go from five to seven annual conversions and thus take some work off the Getafe plant. In detail. The conversion process is usually a rather complex task for European aerospace engineering. Civilian A330s leave the Toulouse chain and they are transferred to the conversion center, where for about nine months military systems, in-flight refueling equipment, specific avionics, communications and interior configurations adapted to each client are integrated, until they are ready for aerial refueling missions, troop transport, strategic cargo or medical evacuations. The plant in Seville will also assume maintenance, repair and modernization (MRO) tasks for aircraft already in service. Airbus will take advantage of the current hangars in San Pablo and optimize them to work with two aircraft at a time, imitating Getafe’s way of workingwhere usually one is converted while the other receives maintenance tasks. Figures. The new line will generate around 200 direct jobswhich will be added to the 2,000 professionals already working in São Paulo, and about 600 additional positions in the auxiliary industry. In Andalusia, Airbus is responsible for around 3,500 people between the San Pablo, Tablada (Seville) and Cádiz plants, and more than 14,000 throughout Spain. Why Seville. The president of Airbus in Spain, Francisco Javier Sánchez Segura, pointed ABC that the reasons were based above all on the technical knowledge accumulated in the A400M and C295 programs, the existing infrastructure (San Pablo is the only Airbus factory with two final assembly lines) and the operational proximity with Getafe, which will act as strategic coordinator of the entire program. A technological leap. Until now, Airbus Defense and Space’s activity in Seville revolved around the assembly and maintenance of the A400M and the C295, both military transport aircraft. Sanchez Segura underlined The Seville center will replicate the cutting-edge technologies developed in Getafe, including the intensive use of augmented reality applied to the assembly and inspection of systems. Andalusia, in the focus of aviation. For the Junta de Andalucía, the announcement fits into its strategy to place the community in one of the three most important European points, along with Toulouse and Hamburg. The acting Minister of Industry, Jorge Paradela, recalled that the region already has several important investments, such as the arrival of the Swiss company Pilatus to manufacture private and military training aircraft, and the Ryanair projectvalued at 500 million euros, to internalize the repair of aeronautical engines in Andalusia, with 600 direct jobs planned. The acting Minister of Economy, Carolina España, rated the Airbus announcement is “magnificent news”, also highlighting that exports from the Andalusian aerospace sector have grown by 86% so far in 2026. The other side. The ADM Seville fair, where the advertisement was presented, also attracted protests. The STOP Arms Fair Platform, which brings together social groups, unions, environmentalists and pacifists, gathered at the gates of FIBES to denounce “the institutional support” for the defense industry and the presence of companies that, according to these organizations, have links to human rights violations in armed conflicts such as the one in Gaza. What’s coming now. Airbus has about two years of works, personnel training and technological adaptation ahead before San Pablo delivers its first converted aircraft. If the planned pace is met, Seville and Getafe will end up operating in a coordinated manner to satisfy a larger customer base in a context that does not seem to be going to let up. According to Sánchez SeguraAerópolis depends on around 70% of Airbus’ workload, and this for the Seville plant means consolidating in a field that until now was foreign to it. Cover image | Air and Space Army In Xataka | The war in Iran is doing something that not even Ryanair imagined: making 20 euro flights a relic of the past

open 24/7 with 180 workers

by

While Europe seeks technological sovereigntyindependence from foreign technology and How to accommodate your data centers in a system in which the electrical grid is saturatedAmerican Big Tech is establishing itself on the ground. Amazon is one of the most aggressive with its expansion of data centers and Spain, which has been showing its energetic plumageha conquered these companies with one name standing out above the others: Aragón. In short. The community has become one of Europe’s renewable batteries. For years, its energy power has allowed gigawatts to be diverted towards Catalan and Basque industrial centers, but things are changing and, now, they need the energy for themselves. For the data centers that are arriving, rather. Because both Aragón and Amazon have been making promises for months about how these data centers will impact the region and, finally, we can see how many jobs six of the data centers located in Villanueva de Gállego will generate. The round number? 180 direct workers who demonstrate that from words to actions… there is a distance. The promised numbers. Amazon, through AWS, is going to fill Aragon with data centers. In the PIGA (the General Interest Plan of Aragon) it is already details that the idea is for AWS to build 30 data centers and a dozen electrical substations in the region. Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca will take part of the pie, but others are already being developed in Walqa, San Mateo de Gállego and La Puebla de Híjar. During this year’s MWC, Amazon advertisement that they were going to go from less than 20,000 million euros in investment to around 33,700 million to expand their data center infrastructure in Aragon between 2026 and 2035. The plans are ambitious and they themselves estimated that their actions would contribute 31,700 million euros to the GDP of Spain and 18,500 million to the GDP of Aragon. Regarding employment, Amazon itself spoke of 29,900 full-time employees in total, 13,400 in Aragon alone. There was a nuance: these calculations included those of local companies, direct, indirect and induced. Exaggerating, telling the baker who made bread for the sandwiches of the workers who build the infrastructure. Villanueva de Gállego. Although the figure is striking, from the beginning has been reported that they are not going to be new long-term jobs, but rather very dependent on that first phase of expansion and that the reality would be very different. How far? Well, if we look at what was published in The Aragon Newspapersix of those 30 data centers will generate 180 jobs when operational. This is the figure that Amazon itself has provided and that has been published in the Official Gazette of Aragon. In the BOA they refer to the report of the Aragonese Institute of Environmental Management, which is necessary for the American giant to begin the works and, in fact, it is detailed that they have four years to put these data centers into operation before the environmental impact report has to be reviewed. 180 employees across six data centers with three shifts a day to operate 24/365 It doesn’t close here. And, as we say, when they come into operation there will be 180 people between the six buildings. They will be distributed in three shifts and will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A data center cannot stop and continuous monitoring is needed. Is 180 employees across six data centers a lot? The truth is that the figure does not seem too large because even the largest data centers on the planet do not have that many workers. xAI’s Colossus is one of the largest in the world and there is details even how many plugs there are in the bathrooms, but not a round number of direct jobs. HE speaks of close to 3,000 jobs in the region, but we are in the same situation: it is in Memphis counting direct and indirect jobs, not a round number of direct jobs in Colossus. Bedrock. If you are wondering why so much computing power from Amazon in Aragon, the answer is Bedrock. The intention of the company is that these data centers are the basis of your service which gives access to models from both Amazon and third parties (Anthropic or Mistral, for example) through a unified API. You can call multiple models from the same interface and Amazon takes care of everything else. The idea is that, being in Spain and closer to end customers, those who need to work with very low latency can do so more easily. The energy problem. Aside from jobs, there is the underlying issue of energy. Because Aragón is a ‘green battery’, but renewables are not the best source of energy for data centers. During peak computing phases, data centers need a lot of energy immediately, something that is driving the use of private nuclear, gas and even coal. It is estimated that the expansion of AWS plans will add more than 10,800 GWh per year, more than all current electricity consumption of the community, but the technology company has a backup plan planned to power its facilities. On its water reservoirs, AWS will build a photovoltaic plant with a power of 9,500 kW that will incorporate a system of double batteries and backup generators in case there are problems with the grid supply. leaving environmental criticism aside And returning to the question of jobs, the estimate is that permanent and direct jobs will be around 1,800 during the period of activity of these data centers, which gives us an average of 60 per installation. At the moment, we already see that six of them are far from that average and allow us to get an idea of ​​how “the technological project largest in southern Europe“impacts the job numbers. In Xataka | The great paradox of Madrid: the region with the largest energy deficit in Spain is losing the data centers

Google has become (even) more demanding with captchas. The Open Source community has not been amused at all

by

One of the conversations of the weekend was carried out by important developers, such as those from GrapheneOS. Google’s new security measures related to website access are beginning to be implemented in 2026 and, as a result, both custom ROMs and operating systems without Google presence have it tough. Google Cloud Fraud. If someone is okay with traffic light captchas as a security measure, I would tell you that they are not trustworthy. Google was also clear that they were not always ideal, so it developed an alternative solution, the evolution of reCAPTCHA. When the system detects suspicious traffic, it does not use the captcha system, it asks the user to scan a QR code with their smartphone. According to Googleis the best way to fight against bots and unwanted agents, protecting against attacks and possible fraud. But everything has a B side. The problem. The problem is that, for this security measure to work on Android, it is mandatory that the device has Google Play Services installed in a recent version. One of the key points of custom ROMs like GrapheneOS It is precisely that they are systems based on Open Source Android, but without Google services. Google Play Services is Google’s proprietary software layer that runs on certified Androids and provides, among other things, the APIs that verify that a device is approved by Google. Without them, it is not possible to satisfy the requests of the Play Integrity API, which is responsible for approving web access. The GrapheneOS case. GrapheneOS is one of the most secure ROMs in the world, one that has earned its reputation thanks to additional layers built on AOSP and, above all, by not having Google services or needing them for its operation. The GrapheneOS team argues that this has nothing to do with security. They claim that Play Integrity API rejects GrapheneOS and other systems even though it is technically more secure than most devices that do pass verification. Google’s Play Integrity API allows devices without security patches for years but updated to Play Services, but blocks the use of GrapheneOS even though it is much more technically secure. Mega’s entrance. After the complaint not only from Graphene, but from Cyber ​​DigestMega has come in to criticize the measure. Remember that in 2023 an attempt was made to do something similar with Web Environment Integrity (WEI). This was a proposal that Google had to abandon after criticism. That year, Google tried to put in place a mechanism that would allow websites to check whether the software and hardware on a user’s device was verified by Google. The logic was the same as now: if your settings did not conform to what Google considered acceptable, access was blocked. The proposal generated such widespread rejection among developers, web standards organizations and users that Google had to withdraw it. And now what. The relevant question is not whether or not Google is entitled to do this, because it is. The question is what happens when the de facto standard for online verification is controlled by the same company that sells the hardware and software necessary to surpass it. In Xataka | There is a race to get the first phone with 100% free software: so far there has only been failure

Graphing calculators are very expensive, so a 15-year-old boy from Almería has declared war on them with open source

by

It was 2003 when I started college with great enthusiasm and an old Casio calculator from high school that I ended up replacing shortly after with a Texas Instruments TI-86 graphing calculator. At that time it cost me 150 euros, but I spent it because there was no other option and it was going to make my life easier with graphs and matrices. My old TI-86 is already a relic, but those who start engineering this 2026 will spend at least those 150 euros on a more current model like this either this other one from HP. They have a slightly more modern aesthetic and a color screen, but the essence and prices have barely changed. So to a young developer from Almería an idea has occurred to him: build a professional level scientific and graphing calculator for about 20 euros using open source software. And as its creator, Juan Ramón (alias El-EnderJ), explains, at 15 years old he still doesn’t need it: “I did it simply because of that great injustice.” A DIY calculator with open source. The project is barely a couple of months old and its premise could not be more ambitious: NumOS (its operating system) runs on the ESP32-S3 microcontroller and aims to break the monopoly of commercial models that cost around 150 euros. It is not a mobile app or a website: it is a piece of physical hardware that the user assembles and programs from scratch. Knowing how difficult it is for the education system to accept a DIY calculator for exams, El-EnderJ has in mind a “factory-sealed version that is completely legal.” Disclaimer: the final product will use ESP32 S3 N16R8 and a 3.2″ IPS screen. Grapher app. Via: GitHub Why is it important. The educational calculator market is controlled by an oligopoly: Texas Instruments, Casio and HP, with devices whose hardware has not been significantly renewed for decades and a price range that has neither changed much over the years nor differs too much from each other. But the underlying problem is also one of access: this is the case of fantastic free and quality tools such as GeoGebra and Desmos. As El-EnderJ explains: “To use them you must use a mobile phone, a tablet or a laptop, which is completely prohibited in most classrooms. The educational system requires dedicated devices that do not have an internet connection to avoid cheating.” On the other hand, on a technical level it is notable that NeoCalculator integrates a complete CAS engine within such a low budget as manufacturers such as Casio, HP and TI reserve only their high-end models. And be careful, this engine shows the intermediate steps of derivatives, integrals and solving equations. The eternal? calculator oligopoly. Juan Ramón says that, encouraged by what he saw people doing with graphing calculators (like programming), he looked up the price and was surprised: “I was shocked when I saw that a calculator from more than 30 years ago cost more than 150 euros. So I looked a little more and realized that the cost of producing them is below 20 euros, so you are paying a 130-euro premium.” Free software has been democratizing tools that were previously either expensive or exclusive for decades, but in hardware everything has been slower. The clearest precedent is NumWorksthe French calculator founded in 2015 that was the first to completely open its source code and allow anyone to modify its operating system. NeoCalculator goes one step further: not only is the software free, but so is the hardware design. From Shanghai to Almería: the ESP32-S3-BOX-3 chip from Espressif How it works. The base is the microcontroller ESP32-S3which according to its official documentation incorporates a dual-core Xtensa LX7 processor capable of running at 240 MHz, with 512 KB of internal SRAM, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 connectivity, as well as support for vector instructions aimed at accelerating neural networks and signal processing. It is a chip designed for IoT converted into the brain of a high-performance calculator. El-EnderJ is critical of what it replaces: “The ESP32-S3 is from 2020; the Zilog Z80 of the TI-84 Plus is from 1976. There is a clear difference.” The mathematical core of the project is not development from scratch, but sophisticated integration. “The biggest challenge has been putting the Giac engine, which is the same one used by the HP Prime, in a chip that has thousands of times less memory than a computer.” In fact, Giac is an open source symbolic calculation engine originally developed at the University of Grenoble and indeed, it is the engine that equips the HP Prime G2. For the graphical interface, the project uses LVGL, an open source embedded graphics library widely used in the industry. Combining hardware SPI with LVGL, NeoCalculator maintains a smooth interface at 60 FPS, which is a demanding performance target for a microcontroller in this price range. Yes, but. The incipient project of the Almeria developer has important technical and regulatory limitations. The most important is precisely the connectivity of the ESP32-S3, something strictly prohibited in exam contexts. This implies that in its current state NeoCalculator could not be used in official university exams (not the EBAU, which generally restricts graphic models). On the other hand, this fantastic project is still very green: it lacks an integrated physical keyboard and is still pending receipt. OSHWA certificationessential to ensure transparency, the ability to customize or repair each component of the device. In Xataka | Someone has passed 12,000 laws and reforms to source code and now searching the BOE is no longer an ordeal In Xataka | The “ChatGPT for lawyers” exists, it was born in Spain and has just reached a milestone: becoming a unicorn Cover | Anoushka Puri and El-EnderJ

The ‘vibe coding’ promised to democratize software. Your first gift is 5,000 apps with open sensitive data

by

An investigation by the firm RedAccess has found more than 5,000 applications created with tools vibe coding which practically lack authentication. Anyone who stumbles upon its URL can enter. Of those 5,000, 2,000 appeared to contain private data upon inspection. The finding covers apps generated with Lovable, Replit, Base44 and Netlify, four of the platforms that have most popularized describing a program with words and letting a LLM write it. Why is it important. The promise of vibe coding is that anyone, without knowing how to program, can build software. The catch is that this same “anyone” also doesn’t know what questions to ask an application before releasing it on the Internet. The result is a new category of breaches caused not by careless employees or advanced attackers, but by people who have thrown together an internal tool in an afternoon without going through anyone on the security team. In detail. Researchers have located these applications by doing normal searches on Google and Bing, combining the domains of each platform with generic terms. Nothing of hacking: It’s more like reverse engineering a search engine. What appeared behind those URLs included hospital quadrants with doctor data, company strategy presentations, complete records of chatbot conversations with customers (with names and telephone numbers), and freight books from transport companies. In some cases, access even allowed them to gain administrator privileges and expel others. Between the lines. The platforms involved have responded with the predictable argument: it is the user’s fault. Replit remembers that its apps can be marked as private with one click. Base44 maintains that its access controls are robust and that disabling them is a conscious decision. Lovable points out that its role is to provide tools, not configure them for anyone. It is a valid argument and, above all, comfortable. It is also the same one that Amazon used with the buckets Misconfigured S3 leaking Verizon data or from WWE: the setting was there, but the user didn’t find it. The context. He vibe coding takes an old problem to a new level. Every time a layer of abstraction has democratized a craft (like spreadsheets, the wrappers of AI or web templates), the newly arrived group has arrived without the baggage of good practices that the previous one had. What changes now is the speed. Someone from a non-technical department can create a tool in two minutes and upload it to production without it going through IT. Yes, but. The AI ​​models that generate the code are not neutral agents. They do what is asked of them, no more, no less. If no one tells them “protect this in X way and implement Y,” they won’t do it. Security by default is still not a learned behavior in most of these tools, and that is a design decision of the platforms, not the end user. The consequence is foreseeable. There are going to be many more leaks like the ones RedAccess has caught before the industry internalizes that a “publish” button should not coexist with a privacy setting hidden three menus below. In Xataka | I have lived the “miracle” of vibe coding: this is how I programmed an Android TV app without having any idea about programming Featured image | Xataka

Real Madrid, Premier League and the final of the Mutua Madrid Open. Everything in Movistar Plus+

by

We have just started May, a month in which many sports competitions are decided. There we can include LaLiga, the Premier League or the Euroleague basketballjust to cite a few examples. If you like all this, you have a lot to see in Movistar Plus+: a platform that you can subscribe to regardless of which operator you are and what it costs 9.99 euros per month. Monthly subscription to Movistar Plus+ The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The last Clásico of the season can be seen on Movistar Plus+ Have you ever thought about trying this streaming platform? Any time is good, but if you like sports in general (and football in particular), now is a good time. Also, since it has no permanence, you can try it for a month and, if it doesn’t convince you, unsubscribe whenever you want. That’s also what your ‘Free Plan‘, although this is more limited in content. Now let’s go to the sports agenda (about premieres, we’ll talk a little further down). This weekend there are quite interesting things, especially on sunday: Espanyol-Real Madrid, Manchester United-Liverpool and the men’s final of the Mutua Madrid Open tennis. If that’s not enough, next week things are going to be intense with Bayern Munich-PSG and the Clásico. And movies? We have a huge catalog on the platform with several Oscar winners, such as ‘Sentimental Value‘ either ‘Weapons. Others will also arrive like ‘Gladiator 2‘ in the coming days, although we cannot lose sight of the Movistar Plus+ series. There are own productions on the platform that are very worthwhilelike the recently released ‘Yo siempre sometimes’ or others that have been around for longer but are hilarious, like ‘Poquita fe’. If you are planning to take a getaway these days, Movistar Plus+ could be very good for you. You can download whatever you want from the platform to watch it on the plane or train. In addition, it supports two simultaneous playbacks, so you can watch what you want wherever you are while someone at home continues enjoying the platform. 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 | Movistar Plus+ In Xataka | Movistar Plus+ for non-Movistar customers: what it is, how much it costs, channels, additional services and how to contract it In Xataka | Movistar Plus+ activates its Free Plan with complete programs and a lot of content, regardless of which operator you are

The house of Open Source is collapsing because of vibecoding

by

When it arrived, GitHub was miraculous for Open Source developers. Not only did it allow you to have a platform on which to host your code and always have it updated thanks to the version control software on which it was based (Git), but it did so with a social network component that definitively boosted its growth. Everything was wonderful, but suddenly it wasn’t. When GitHub didn’t exist. Developer Armin Ronacher I remembered GitHub before GitHub. When your Open Source software was on SourceForge, you had Trac running and that segment was filled with decentralized and anarchic Subversion repositories. It is a good way to remember how important the arrival of GitHub was, which solved almost all the problems that existed for these developers and became the backbone of the Open Source community. The Ghostty Earthquake. Although there had already been criticism and complaints in recent months, there has been a before and after in this situation. It happened this week, when Mitchell Hashimoto, developer of ghosttyannounced that left GitHub. This terminal emulator is a project with notable popularity on GitHub (more than 52,000 stars), but its creator has become fed up with the platform’s unreliability and has declared that “this is no longer a serious place to work.” GitHub acknowledges the problems. Last March, GitHub CTO, Vlad Fedorov, admitted in an article on the company’s official blog that the platform was indeed suffering availability problems. Hashimoto’s post seemed to set off even more alarm bells, because the same engineer published an article shortly after titled “An update on GitHub availability.” In it he apologized again, but also explained that the problems have a culprit. At GitHub they wanted to explain that the availability problems are due to the brutal growth they have had in software creation in recent months. Source: GitHub. Damn AI agents. This engineer indicated how in recent months they have realized that they need a redesign of GitHub that can scale by multiplying its capacity by 30. “The main reason for this rapid change is in how the software is being developed. Since the second half of December 2025, agentic development workflows have accelerated significantly.” The vibecoding phenomenon and the rise of Claude Code and other agentic development tools have caused companies and new users to develop more and more software, and that has caused reliability problems in a platform that was not prepared for this avalanche of code. They promise to fix the problem. At GitHub they know what to do: “Our priorities are clear: first availability, then capacity, then new features.” They are going to focus entirely on that to improve the behavior of critical services and optimize availability that in April has fallen to 85%, something unacceptable for a service on which millions of developers depend. The official history of its availability makes it clear: too many yellow and red updates. GitHub has no CEO. There is one more element that worries in the future of the company. In August 2025 Thomas Dohmke left office CEO and Microsoft did not replace him. Instead of that distributed management functions among several executives and integrated GitHub into the CoreAI division. Meanwhile, Dohmke announced in February the creation of his new startup, called Entire, which is precisely intended as an evolved successor to GitHub that proposes solutions for the new flow of software development that has emerged with AI. The alternatives are fine, but. There are, of course, very valid alternative platforms. Among them is including Plastic SCM, from the Spanish Códice Softwarewhich in turn was purchased by Unity in 2020. There are others like CodeBerg or GitLab even more popular among the community, and even OpenAI seems want to create your own platform. Whether you do it or not, the problem with all of them is the same: GitHub had become a social network for developers, and it showed that in this case centralization provided more advantages than disadvantages. If the community now spreads out, project discovery and contributions will become fragmented. Image | Rubaitul Azad In Xataka | AI came into our lives under a “freemium” model: GitHub and Claude are clear that the future is paying for it

the strange atmosphere of the Mutua Madrid Open

by

The Caja Mágica is, on paper, one of the best-conceived tennis venues on the circuit in Spain. Modern facilities, first-class slopes, careful organization. And yet, each edition of the Mutua Madrid Open sparks the same conversation: why are the stands so empty? Why is the atmosphere more like a corporate event than a Masters 1000? The answers are uncomfortable and point in very specific directions. What is the Madrid Open. The Mutua Madrid Open celebrates its 25th edition in 2026. Since 2009 it has been played in the Caja Mágica, the venue designed by Dominique Perrault in the Parque Lineal del Manzanares, and since 2019 it has been directed by Feliciano López, who combines that role with his last seasons as a professional player. It is a combined Masters 1000 tournament, which means it simultaneously hosts the ATP men’s draw and the WTA women’s draw: one of nine events of that category in the world, one step below the four Grand Slams. The prices. Tickets for the Manolo Santana Stadium, the center court of the tournament, with capacity for just under 10,000 spectators, oscillate between 10 euros in the first days and 176 euros in the semis and final. They are not scandalous numbers, but at Roland Garros, tickets for the main draw with assigned seating on the Philippe-Chatrier court (the equivalent of Manolo Santana, with capacity for more than 14,000 spectators) They start at 95 euros in day sessions. Tickets for the semifinals started at 120 euros, and the final at 220 euros. In other words: The semifinal of the most important clay Grand Slam in the world has a price similar to what Madrid asks for a final round match in a Masters 1000. And Paris is Paris. From here, prices skyrocket: a second week pass has a starting price of more than 850 euros, which places the Madrid Open in a league of exclusivity that its weight on the circuit does not fully justify. Furthermore, the sales model (separate sessions, stadiums with differentiated access, multiplication of premium categories) turns the purchase of a ticket into a labyrinth for deep pockets. When the VIP is empty. In May 2024, one of the most commented images on social networks was the image of the Manolo Santana VIP boxes during the women’s final, played between the two best tennis players in the world at that time, with dozens of empty seats. Complaints from fans were especially directed at that area, occupied largely by guests, with low attendance that was visible both in smaller matches and in meetings with the most popular figures of the tournament: tickets sell out quickly, resellers raise prices, and at the same time there are dozens of seats reserved for guests who end up not showing up. Image problems. Outside, the tournament projects an exclusive and aspirational image. But inside, the empty stands do not go unnoticed. When Feliciano López himself spoke this month about the controversies over the invitations, his explanation pointed directly to the structure that owns the event: “The owners of the tournament are not us; they are other companies, with other interests, clients who have to help.” Tennis and networking. The tournament’s own official website describes its premium spaces as ideal for combining “leisure, sports and networking with the idea of ​​satisfying the needs of the most demanding fans.” It is not an oversight in the writing, it is just that this is the business model: in a tournament with the relatively short tradition of the Madrid tournament, the imbalance between the space conceived as a social experience and as a sporting spectacle is even more evident. The result is an atmosphere that lifelong fans criticize with phrases like “I’m going to take a photo, I don’t care about tennis.” Attending the Open has become a social event where tennis is the decoration. Gamblers in the stands. Another type of networking: in the 2025 Madrid Challenger (a minor category tournament held at the Country Club) incidents related to bettors they marked the entire week. During the quarterfinals, comments such as “Gaubas is going to pay me” could be heard as attendees looked at their phones to check live betting apps. The Slovak tennis player Norbert Gombos even stopped the match to directly rebuke a group of young people in the stands. It was a semi-final, and a scene difficult to imagine at Roland Garros or Wimbledon. LaLiga’s Integrity Director warned that tennis and basketball are the sports where the pressure of bettors on the atmosphere in the stands becomes more evident, due to the pace of the game and the proliferation of micro-event markets (point-to-point betting, per game, per set). The public no longer cheers out of hobby: they are getting excited or angry depending on the money they win or lose. An attitude that degrades the atmosphere of a sport that requires concentration and silence. The drama. Neither the Madrid Open is a failure nor the Caja Mágica is a bad venue. But there are doubts about the tournament model that has been built: prices that leave out the average fan, stands that look like corporate meeting rooms, a poorly maintained invitation policy and results that give a bad image… an atmosphere that does not accompany the quality of the tennis played on the court. In Xataka | If Carlos Alcaraz is not allowed to wear a smart bracelet, Whoop has provided him with the solution: underwear with sensors

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.