print

Fable 5 is back with small print. One that says who really rules in US AI

by

Fables 5 has returned three weeks after the US government ordered its blackout. It returns with several asterisks: it only allows 50% of weekly usage for paid plans, and it brings a more aggressive security filter along with a commitment that binds Anthropic to share with the government every model that comes after it, including future ones. The official origin is a reproducible failure in models much inferior to Fable. But what remains after solving it weighs more: early government access before each launch and dedicated computing to audit the models. In detail. On June 12, the US government acted after learning of a report from Amazon researchers that Fable 5 had identified software vulnerabilities by bypassing its safeguards. Anthropic replicated the finding with less powerful models (Opus 4.8, GPT-5.5 and Kimi K2.7) and everyone got it the same. On June 30, the restriction was lifted. Of course, the new classifier notifies the user when it blocks a request and redirects it to Opus 4.8. Between the lines. Anthropic admits that this classifier blocks more harmless requests, especially in programming and debugging code, its main use. The safety margin itself, the company says, is “far greater than in any previous release.” Alberto Romero, in The Algorithmic Bridgereads it like this: if the model fails due to excess caution in its most common use, the real ceiling of what a user can squeeze out remains at the level of Opus 4.8 either GPT-5.5although the model below is more powerful. Why is it important. Anthropic grants early access to models that “materially advance the capability frontier” in national security, and assembles internal teams for government priorities. The government reserves the right to reimpose the license “if circumstances change”, but without defining which ones. Since the premise of this industry is that a larger model develops new capabilities overnight, almost any advancement fits that phrase. The context. Anthropic has been collaborating on an ad hoc basis with US agencies such as the Treasury and the National Cybersecurity Office for almost two years. What is new is that this work becomes a permanent protocol, and that Fable and Mythos They are the first to pass through it. Anthropic has been chasing OpenAI for years, but in 2026 it has taken the lead on several fronts, in the heat of Claude Code, Claude Cowork and the discovery of the quality of their models’ responses by those who had not left ChatGPT. Accepting this tutelage now, when they finally have something to lose, is a gamble: they prefer a guarded border to a race that neither they nor their government fully control. And now what. What needs to be monitored is whether the classifier improves its accuracy in code without losing a strong hand, and whether OpenAI or Google end up signing something similar. If that happens, Fable’s return will no longer seem like an isolated incident. In Xataka | Sharing your ChatGPT or Claude password is not like sharing your Netflix password: there are people learning it the hard way Featured image | Anthropic

The teacher from Cartagena who asked the Beatles to print their lyrics and changed how we listen to music

by

In 1966, Juan Carrión traveled from Cartagena to Almería with a notebook full of gaps. They were not incomplete notes: they were very specific gaps, the fragments of Beatles lyrics that I had not been able to decipher listening to them on the radio and on their records. He went to ask John Lennon to help him complete them. A request that would result in an editorial decision that the recording industry would retain for decades. Who is Juan? Juan Carrión Gañán was born in Madrid in 1924. He became a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture before resigning to go to London as a Spanish teacher at the Language Center associated with the British Embassy. When he returned to Spain, he settled in Cartagena, where he was offered a position at the Tentegorra military base, and set up his own academy. At that time, no one followed this system of teaching English with song lyrics, but it was a tricky job: I transcribed them in real time while listening to them on the radio, leaving blank the fragments that he could not decipher. A pioneer. Let’s remember that in 1966 there was no convenient way to access the lyrics of a song. Singles occasionally included it on their back cover, and LPs rarely did. The fact is that Carrión’s pedagogical method was effective and pioneering, according to describes the writer Javier Adolfo Iglesiasauthor of the book ‘Juan and John, the professor and Lennon in Almería forever’. Carrión was a “pioneer in the use of multimedia resources, cinema, BBC news and Beatles songs” to teach English. But still, there were fragments that escaped him. To the meeting. When Carrión found out that John Lennon was coming to Spain in October 1966 to film ‘How I Won the War!’ Under the orders of Richard Lester, he took the bus to Almería. He stayed there for a week even though he didn’t have much money: first he made friends with Les Anthony, his driver and bodyguard, and through him he sent him the notebooks. They finally met in person. He had a very specific request: that the Beatles include printed lyrics on their albums to make his job easier. Apparently, Lennon promised him that it would be done on the next album. Curiously, Lennon’s relationship with his colleagues was not going through the best moment, and he was considering leaving the Beatles. In those same days in Almería he would compose ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, a song that the Beatles would record at the end of 1966 and publish as a single in February 1967. Against Sgt. Pepper’s. The LP that the Beatles released after the meeting was ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, in 1967. And according to it is saidwas the first rock LP to include all lyrics printed on its back cover. Curiously, many sources specialized in the history of the Beatles document the fact, but Carrión is never mentioned. And yet, the importance of the Beatles’ decision was very significant: what the band did on ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ became standard practice in the industry. To the cinema. In 2013, director David Trueba adapted Carrión’s story in ‘Living is easy with your eyes closed’, with Javier Cámara in the role of the professor. At the 2014 Goya Awards, the film won six awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Leading Actor. It was the Spanish candidacy for the Oscars that year. Carrión died on August 30, 2017 in Cartagena and Trueba lament having “met very late in life, especially in his.” In Xataka | The shock of an era: this was the murky breakup of the Beatles seen 50 years later

Self-employed people can collect two retirement pensions together. The fine print is that they must have paid for both

by

There is one thing that any worker who contributes to Social Security expects: to receive a retirement pension. when your working life ends. What not many people know is that you can collect up to two retirement pensions: one if you have listed as self-employed and another if you have done it in the general regime as an employee. The fine print, of course, is that it is not enough to have contributed a couple of years in each regime. The conditions for both benefits to be recognized They are quite demanding. But yes, you can retire with two retirement pensions. What exactly does Social Security say?. The Social Security website has an answer Directly for that doubt, you may have the right to collect a retirement pension from the General Regime and another from the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers (RETA) as long as the contribution requirements for each one are met separately. That is, having at least 15 years of contributions in each of the regimes. If at the time of retirement the requirements of any of them are not met, they are accumulated in the one that is. That is, they continue to count for the regime that does comply, although only one pension will be received, as established in article 205 of the General Law of Social Security. First requirement: meet the minimum contribution. The first requirement to receive two retirement pensions is the minimum required for any worker who wants to access a retirement benefit. That is, have the required age to retire and have contributed enough years to receive it. In 2026, that means have quoted at least 38 years and 3 months (to retire at age 65) or less time if you wait until age 66 years and 10 months, which is the ordinary age for this year. The second requirement: 15 years in each modality. The second requirement is a little less common, and that is why not many people can access this type of double pension: prove moonlighting simultaneous. In other words, to receive it, the worker must be registered in both the RETA and the General Regime. That is, be listed as an employee and an employee simultaneously, and prove a minimum of 15 years of contributions in each of the regimes. This contribution can be simultaneous (15 years registered in both) or overlapping (15 years as an employee and 15 more years as a self-employed worker). If the worker is not registered in the General Regime but is in the RETA at the time of retirement, he or she must prove that at least two of those years must have overlapped within the last 15 years prior to retirement. In other words, you may have been alternating periods of time as an employee and as a self-employed person throughout your working life until you add 15 years of each, but two of those years of change between one regime and another must occur during the last 15 years of your working life, as specified in the article 205.1b of the General Law of Social Security. There must be a coincidence of both in the years prior to retirement, it is not useful to have contributed 16 years as an employee at the beginning of your working career and then another 23 years only as a self-employed person. If not multiply, add. At this point, many of you will have had a question come to mind: if you don’t reach 15 years of contributions in one of the two, what happens to those contributions, are they lost? This is where the article 49 of the General Law of Social Security. If, for example, you have contributed for 10 years as a self-employed person, but you do not reach the minimum to collect a pension for the RETA, but you do for your work as an employee, the regulations contemplate that these contribution bases as a self-employed person can be accumulated to those you have generated as an employee (or vice versa), but only for calculate the regulatory base that determines How much will your pension be?not to add more years of contributions. This means that those years of self-employment do count, even if they do not generate a second pension. They raise the regulatory base and, with it, the amount of the pension that you do collect. Two pensions, but one pension capped. Collecting two pensions at the same time does not mean being able to add any amount. Although these are two benefits from different regimes, there is a maximum limit for pensions contributions that also apply in this case. In 2026, this ceiling is set at 3,359.60 euros per month, in 14 paymentswhich is equivalent to 47,034.40 euros per year. If the sum of the two pensions exceeds that figure, the cut will be applied up to that amount. This means that it only makes economic sense to collect two pensions if each of them, on its own, falls below the maximum. In most cases, people in this situation will have contributed fewer years for the RETA than for the General Regime, so their two pensions, added together, are usually well below the ceiling. In Xataka | In Spain, those over 65 years of age are working like never before. It’s not passion for work: it’s for retirement age Image | Unsplash (Matt Bennett)

Giving seven times more vitamin D during pregnancy improves children’s memory at 10 years old. The problem is in the fine print

by

During pregnancy, the recommendations of supplementation They are an area where science advances with lead feet, since the most important thing is always to guarantee safety. One of these supplements that is heard the most is vitamin Dtraditionally known for its role in calcium absorption and bone health, but which has been in the spotlight for years for its possible impact on neurodevelopment. A new study of Danish origin has put its objective on this statement to be able to clarify what happens when a mother supplements with vitamin D during pregnancy. Through its publication in JAMAtells how, to achieve good results, almost 500 children were analyzed for several years until finally being able to see if they had cognitive improvement during their childhood. What were they based on? To understand this discovery we have to go back in time to a randomized clinical trial titled as COPSAC2010whose initial results were published in 2016. This trial sought to evaluate whether vitamin D prevented the risk of suffering from asthma or persistent wheezing in babies, and to verify this the researchers divided the mothers into two groups from the 24th week of gestation: One group would receive the standard recommended dose of vitamin D of 400 IU per day. The other group had a “megadose” of vitamin D of 2,800 IU daily. The discovery. Taking advantage of this valuable group of 498 children, the research team decided to get more out of it, since when these children reached 10 years of age they were subjected to rigorous cognitive tests to see if the fact of having given vitamin D to their mother during pregnancy had left its mark on their brain. In this way, two objectives were covered with a single investigation. Here the results revealed that children in the high supplementation group showed a modest but significant improvement in verbal and visual memory compared to the children of mothers who took the standard dose of vitamin D. Although something important to note is that it puts to rest any idea that this supplementation is a machine to “create geniuses”, because there were no differences in IQ and they only saw that the ability to retain information was improved. The small print. Given such a finding, it is tempting to think that all pregnant women should multiply their vitamin D intake to give their children an advantage over others. But here we must pay attention to different problems, such as that the original trial was designed to measure respiratory problems and not neurological development. This means that drawing conclusions from here reduces the statistical robustness of the discovery. But this is not the only problem, since we have seen that the effect is “modest” without seeming to give children a great advantage. And furthermore, the study is based on women who already had normal vitamin D levels before the study, so it is not clear how this dose would act in populations that truly have some type of chronic deficiency of the vitamin. Will there be changes? At the moment, these studies do not justify the need to recommend that all pregnant women supplement their diet with vitamin D, as is the case with other supplements such as folic acid. The real value of this research is not to give us an immediate new prescription, but to open the door to future clinical trials specifically designed to unravel how what happens in the womb continues to shape our brains a decade later. Images | amylla battani In Xataka | We have been sending pregnant women to bed for decades as a precaution. Science has just proven that it is a big mistake

the fine print matters as much as the price

by

If you were thinking about signing up for PlayStation Plusit may be worth checking the calendar. Sony has announced a price rise for its subscription service, which offers monthly games, online multiplayer and other benefits to users of its consoles. The change comes into effect tomorrow, Tuesday, May 20, although with an important nuance: it will not affect all users equally. The announcement has come through a message posted on X. The Japanese company has indicated that the increase responds to current “market conditions” and that the new rates will start at 10.99 dollars, 9.99 euros and 7.99 pounds for one-month subscriptions, and at 27.99 dollars, 27.99 euros and 21.99 pounds for three-month subscriptions. Click to see the original publication in X The immediate question is which markets exactly this rise will reach. At the moment, Sony has not published a official list of countries not one entry in the PlayStation blog with more details. We only have that message, quite brief, for reference. Sony explains that the new PlayStation Plus prices will only apply to new subscribers in “select regions.” It also adds the following: “This price change does not apply to current subscribers (except in Türkiye and India) unless the existing subscription changes or expires.” The statement leaves some unknowns open. The expression “prices will start at” presumably points to the plan essentialthe entry level of the service. In Spain, this modality currently costs 8.99 euros per month and 24.99 euros if contracted for three months. If the increase is finally applied to the Spanish market, the change would mean paying 1 euro more in the monthly plan and 3 euros more in the quarterly plan. What we still don’t know is what will happen with the other levels of the service. PlayStation Plus Extra and PlayStation Plus Premium are the most expensive modalities and include additional benefits, such as Ubisoft+ Classics, a broader catalog of games, classics and title trials, depending on the contracted plan. For now, Sony has not given details about possible changes to these subscriptions. We’ve contacted Sony for more information about the extent of the upload and will update this article if we hear back. Images | sony In Xataka | Pluto is in Sagittarius and that can only mean one thing: the third trailer for ‘GTA VI’ will be out on May 14

Spain wants 90% of the people on this map to have an AVE station 30 minutes away. There is small print

by

The Ministry of Transport and Urban Mobility wants to turn the train into one of the great mobility axes of our country. To this end, the objective has been proposed to promote the use of high speed in the west of the Iberian Peninsula. The project has a clear headline: an AVE station half an hour away for 90% of the inhabitants of the Atlantic corridor. What has been announced? 9% of the population of the Atlantic Corridor will have access to a high-speed station within half an hour in 2030. This is the conclusion reached by the Territorial accessibility analysis carried out by the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobilitythrough the Office of the Commissioner of the Atlantic Corridor. If the plans are fulfilled, the Ministry assures that in less than five years a total of 62 high-speed stations will be ready, spread across 28 provinces and 11 autonomous communities. The jump will have to be substantial because right now there are 33 stations available with high-speed service distributed in 8 autonomous communities and 19 provinces. What is the Atlantic Corridor? Within the mobility of the European Union, the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) defines nine major corridors to define your roadmap and investments. These corridors are large spaces through which a very important part of the citizens of the European Union and their goods move. In the different corridors, therefore, all mobility nodes are taken into account, from ports and airports to railways and roads. In the case of the Atlantic Corridor we are talking about a set of communication nodes that link the south of Germany with Paris and the entire west coast of France with Spain (on its western slope) and Portugal, culminating in the Cádiz area. In these moments, the Atlantic Corridor as it passes through our country offers the following data: 5,400 kilometers of railway tracks 2,900 kilometers of roads Nine seaports Five international airports Nine intermodal stations Four cross-border crossings with Portugal or France And it is linked to 13 autonomous communities and 40 provinces By train. Among the infrastructures designed to facilitate movement through all these places is the train. And, specifically, the boost to high speed that the European Union wants to give to encourage the use of this means of transport instead of the plane. These investments, according to the Ministry of Transport, will have to be completed before December 31, 2030 and represent an investment of 3,123 million euros. It must be taken into account that the European Union has been demanding better connectivity by train from Spain and Portugal than should crystallize with a Madrid-Lisbon in 2030. But It won’t be until 2034 when this line is completely a high-speed route. What does it imply? In order to achieve the milestone set by the European Union, it will be necessary for Spain to complete the “Basque Y”, the high-speed project that has been underway for more than 20 years to provide the region with a qualitative leap in railway connections. that seem not to arrive. Additionally, the entire project will need to be completed to connect Spain with Portugal through Extremaduraa journey in which, at the moment, it is not always possible to travel at high speed. And it will also be necessary to bring high speed to Huelva. 90% with small print. The big headline, as we said, is that 90% of the population of the Atlantic Corridor will have a high-speed station less than half an hour from their home… as long as such a station exists in their province. Here is the headline’s trick, if the province does not have a high-speed station, the percentage drops drastically in some cases. For example, in the press release no reference is made to Salamancaone of the conflicting points when talking about high speed in the Atlantic Corridor. The European Union roadmap marks a connection between the Spanish city and Porto but there is little progress in this regard. Another of the region’s usual demands is also discarded: recover the Vía de la Plata railway. The truth is that this project is neither here nor expected. Other data must also be taken carefully. The Ministry of Transport says that 100% of the inhabitants of the Basque Country will have access to a high-speed train station… but in this case less than an hour away and not 30 minutes. La Rioja will also make a qualitative leap, from the current 14% to 99% although no high-speed train stops in the region. These data lead us to the fact that, in 2030, 70% of the population of the Atlantic Corridor will have a high-speed station less than an hour from their home. The Ministry of Transport puts this number at 26.8 million people. Some controversies. However, having a high-speed line close to home does not mean that we have a high-speed train that is always accessible. Spain, the second country with the most high-speed roads in the world (second only to China), is a good example of how a poorly studied growth ended with high speed stations with very little traffic. Nor does living in a provincial capital guarantee that the train always stops. A paradigmatic example of this is Zamorawhere they fight so that more high-speed trains that cover the Galician corridor stop at their stop. And sometimes, The best solution is to offer high-speed stations in the middle of nowhereas a link between large populations. Increasing the number of high-speed stations does not automatically mean having ample schedules to take a high-speed train. However, this shouldn’t be bad in and of itself. A good example is Japan’s dense high-speed network where there are trains that stop exceptionally between origin and destination and others that dot their journey with more or fewer stops. Of course, there the density of passage in the number of trains facilitates mobility and the connection between “fast” trains and those that stop more frequently. Photo | Adif In Xataka | High speed in Madrid … Read more

The few video game magazines that remain in print have retro content. That’s why ‘Micromanía’ returns in sheet format

by

In times when the traditional video game press, on paper and sold in kiosks, has practically disappeared from the map (only with some glorious exception that barely resists), products aimed at the nostalgic waterline of the most veteran players are, however, in very good health. They know it well in Made with Pixelswho publish not only a magazine dedicated to retro (‘Pixels‘), but also official continuations of kiosk icons such as ‘microhobby‘ and now, ‘Micromania‘… in sheet format! Two-year hiatus. In January 2024, just over 24 months ago, the veteran ‘Micromania‘, the magazine of microcomputers first, PC later, which would accompany several generations of gamers. Its first issues, in traditional format, covered current 8-bit machines such as Spectrum 48K, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64. They revolutionized newsstands with their second stage, the most iconic, in a tabloid format that multiplied the content and served as a bridge to 16 bits. A third stage, again in a traditional format, would focus on the PC world. A mixed return. In this new incarnation the format will be somewhat smaller: 25cm x 35cm, that is, larger than any other magazine, but without reaching the brutal excess of the original. The magazine will be bimonthly, and can be purchased in digital format in PDF (5.99 euros), in paper (11.99) or both (13.99). The layout and design are inevitably reminiscent of the original style and the contents will be comparable: analysis in the classic style of Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Game Boy, NES, Master System, Mega Drive, SNESm, etc., arcade games, news on the current retro scene, solutions and maps… What’s in number one. For now, the contents of the first issue that we know are: Cover dedicated to Monkey Island, with report on Ron Gilbert and the complete saga Two gift posters on the central pages of each issue in giant size Damned Castile Requiem– Exclusive review and downloadable demos for Mega Drive and Dreamcast Interviews with original editors of Hobby Press (Microhobby, Micromanía, Hobby Consolas) Reunion with Turbo Girlset of the first cover in sheet format, 38 years ago Who is behind. Without a doubt, this is the most interesting detail of this proposal: behind the writing of the magazine there are a good number of names from the classic age of video game journalism in Spain, which guarantee that the style of the reviews and articles will be in line with what was done then. It is directed by José Luis Sanz, who was already in charge of ‘Hobby Consolas’, and he is accompanied by Marcos García, who directed magazines, paradoxically, in the competition: ‘Superjuegos’ and ‘Revista Oficial Playstation’, among others. They are joined by editors such as Jesús Martínez del Vas, José Luis Rodríguez, J. Luis Molina and Juanjo Muñoz, among others. Bet on the past. As it could not be otherwise, the magazines that survive on paper, with few exceptions, rely on retro content, or at least retro has a strong presence in their pages. In addition to the aforementioned Hecho con Pixels titles, publications such as the Spanish edition of ‘Retro Gamer’, also by Axel Springer, are added. The new incarnation of ‘Micromanía’ is aimed, obviously, at those who bought it at the time: a juicy market of forty-somethings looking to return to even the most spectacularly uncomfortable format in the history of our newsstands. In Xataka | A programmer’s ingenuity turned a fatal error in this classic video game into a congratulatory message

I was about to buy the best-selling Chinese motorcycle in Spain. Until I read the fine print

by

Chinese motorcycles They are driving the Spanish crazy. So much so that they are achieving the unthinkable: snatch the throne to the historic Japanese Honda and Yamaha. It is no wonder, since both in terms of performance and price, what the Chinese proposals offer is simply unbeatable. Servidor was recently at the Zontes dealership to test what is currently the best-selling A2 license scooter in Spain: the 368G. I went down from trying it convinced of the purchase, until I read the fine print. One that has a lot to do with China’s strategy to conquer Europe. The aforementioned. If you don’t understand much about motorcycles, the summary is easy: this motorcycle is “the SUV” with the best quality-price on the market. It costs less than 5,000 euros, has a 368cc engine and almost 40hp of power, and comes with extras such as rear and front cameras with Sony sensors, heated grips as standard, keyless boot and hood, screen with mirroring for the mobile… The equivalent in any traditional brand costs about 1,500 euros more. The rolling smoothness of the motorcycle is excellent, and although the general qualities are somewhat tight (something completely logical, given the price), it is an absolutely winning purchase. Everything good, except for one little problem. We are guinea pigs. China is achieving something unthinkable a few years ago in the world of motorcycles (and cars). They have not come to compete against smaller brands or carve out a niche for themselves. They have landed in Europe to take the top positions in the ranking and end the leadership of traditional brands. Decades of reign that they have managed to end in a very short time. To do this, at least in the territory of motorcycles, something key is needed in a vehicle for daily use and enjoyment: reliability. And to ensure that the bike passes through the workshop frequently, the inspection intervals are especially abnormal. Yes, but. In the case of this Zontes, the maintenance interval is 4,000km. Yes, every 4,000km you have to go to the workshop. To give you some context, its rivals like the Honda 350 ADV They go through the workshop every 12,000km, and the Yamaha Xmax 300 every 5,000km for oil changes and every 10,000 for the rest of the consumables. The brand is completely aware of the problem this poses, and the 2026 model will arrive in summer with maintenance intervals of 6,000km. It is a substantial change, since every 12,000km a 368g will have passed through the workshop three times. One 2026, two. Little by little. Zontes is not alone in this problem. Voge, the Chinese manufacturer that has managed to become the top 1 in the best-selling trail motorcycles in Spain, has several models with service intervals every 6,000km. But in its star versions, such as 900 DSXthis goes up to 10,000km. If they still sell, imagine in a year. There are many bikers who do not put too many kilometers on their motorcycle, or those who are willing to visit the workshop twice a year in exchange for taking a much more equipped, complete and powerful product. China is managing to place its motorcycles in the top 3 in sales even with this enormous handicap on the table. When your maintenance intervals match the rest of your competitors, the rest will be history. Image | Zontes In Xataka | Spain loves one thing: cheap motorcycles. Europe doesn’t like something else: cheap motorcycles.

the small print of the new PVPC and the end of volatility

by

The January 2026 slope has come with a moderate surprise for millions of homes: the electricity bill is lower than last year, despite the fact that the structural costs of the electrical system have risen sharply. Behind this partial relief there is a significant change that marks a before and after in the regulated rate: the Voluntary Price for Small Consumers (PVPC) has entered its final phase. After the energy crisis of 2022 and the blackout of April 2025, the Spanish electricity system seek stability. The result is a less volatile, more predictable, but also more rigid rate. The underlying question is whether this new PVPC protects the consumer or prevents them from taking full advantage of the drop in prices when energy is abundant. A respite on the January slope. For an average household, the start of the year is being less suffocating than expected. According to the simulator of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), an average consumer will pay about 9% less than in the same period last year. As detailed The Information, The monthly bill is around 52.50 euros, compared to 56.40 euros in January 2025. This decline is not minor if we take into account that two winds are blowing against us. On the one hand, regulated costs have risen —tolls and charges—which represent between 35% and 45% of the bill. On the other hand, it remains the “reinforced operation” of the electrical system after the blackout, which forces the use of more expensive gas plants more frequently to guarantee the stability of the network. Even so, the receipt goes down. The key is in the reform of the PVPC. The metamorphosis of the PVPC. What the consumer sees on their bill today is the result of a transformation that began in 2023. For more than a decade, the PVPC was almost entirely linked to the daily wholesale market, the so-called poolwhere the price is set every 15 minutes. This design made it possible to take advantage of specific drops, but also exposed households to extreme increases during the gas crisis, with prices that in 2022 exceeded 200 euros per megawatt hour on average. To reduce this vulnerability, the Government designed a three-year transition that ended on January 1, 2026. Since then, the price of PVPC energy is calculated with a stable distribution: 45% depends on the daily and intraday market and the remaining 55% on the futures markets—annual, quarterly and monthly. As explained The Conversationthe objective is not to always make the bill cheaper, but to prevent it from behaving like a roller coaster again. This greater stability comes at a cost. The Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) remember that in 2024 The new formula made the bill 5.2% more expensive compared to what would have been paid with the old system. In 2025, with calmer prices, its impact was almost neutral. In 2026, the model is already definitive. The abundance that does not reach the pocket. The new PVPC coincides with a paradoxical moment. During Christmas 2025, Spain and much of Europe experienced some of the lowest electricity prices in recent years. thanks to records of wind and solar production. However, many consumers hardly noticed this drop in their bill. The reason is structural since more than half of the PVPC price is linked to futures contracted months in advance, the sharp falls in the daily market they only partially move upon receipt. This effect is accentuated in moments of curtailmentwhen renewable energy is wasted because the grid cannot absorb it. In Spain, this problem has tripled due to the lack of investment in infrastructure, with especially stressed areas such as Asturias. The result is a contradictory situation: clean and cheap energy at source, but limited by saturated networks and a system that prioritizes stability over extreme savings. What the consumer can do. As he emphasizes The Conversationthe PVPC does not eliminate the user’s decision-making capacity, but it displaces it. The price of energy is no longer the only relevant factor. The bill is made up of several terms and only two are really manageable: the contracted power and the hourly distribution of consumption. In 2025, the power term represented around 20% of the average bill, and the energy bill, 56%. Adjusting the real power needed and taking advantage of off-peak hours—early mornings, weekends and solar periods—remains key to containing costs. The difference is that extreme micro-optimization, based on monitoring the market every hour, loses weight in the new system. So, is it worth staying? The PVPC maintains clear advantages because it remains the only way to access the social bonus and offers total transparency, with prices supervised by the Administration and acts as a cushion against sudden increases in gas in a context of geopolitical uncertainty. But it also loses appeal for very active profiles. Those who adapted their consumption to the cent can no longer fully benefit from the hours of almost free electricity that occur in spring or autumn with high renewable production. The free market, for its part, offers fixed rates that provide certainty, but are not free of risks. The OCU warns of automatic revisions linked to the CPI—3% year-on-year in November—which can make the bill more expensive even for regulated concepts. Comparing carefully is essential. Shadows on the horizon. Beyond the individual consumer, the electrical system faces a fundamental risk. The Government has calculated the 2026 charges assuming that electricity demand will grow by 4.5%. However, the CNMC has much more cautious forecasts, around 2.3%. If consumption does not grow enough, income will not be enough to cover regulated costs and premiums for historical renewables. It’s not a bargain hunter’s fare. The PVPC of 2026 will be more stable, more predictable and safer, but also less spectacular at times of minimum prices. The energy transition has managed to generate clean and abundant electricity, but the consumer continues to pay for obsolete networks, increasing fixed costs and a system designed to avoid blackouts rather than … Read more

Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold, first impressions. Samsung’s most ambitious leap in foldables has fine print

by

Imagine carrying a cell phone in your pocket that can transform into a 10-inch tablet when you fully deploy it. That is the promise of Samsung Galaxy Z TriFoldan idea that was already on the table and that really makes sense as soon as you have it in front of you. Closed, it behaves like a bar format phone with a 6.5-inch screen, something familiar and relatively comfortable, but just start opening it to understand that the South Korean company wanted to go one step further. I think it’s not just about gaining inches, but about materializing a complex idea. After the initial impact, my first reading of the Galaxy Z TriFold is that of a device that surprises with its degree of maturity within a still young category. It is noticeable that Samsung has focused on the solidity of the whole, on how the pieces are assembled and on conveying a certain confidence when handling it, something that, as my colleague Javier Lacort commented in 2024, has not always been evident. Before moving forward, it is worth remembering that we are dealing with first impressions, they are clear sensations, open questions, but without a thorough approval in search of definitive conclusions. Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold technical sheet Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold dimensions and weight Folded: 159.2 x 75.0 x 12.9 mm Unfolded: 159.2 x 214.1 x 3.9 mm (screen with SIM tray) / 4.2 mm (center screen) / 4.0 mm (screen with side button) 309 grams indoor screen Dynamic AMOLED 2X 10 inches 2160×1584 269 ​​ppi 1600 nits peak brightness 120Hz (adaptive) outdoor screen Dynamic AMOLED 2X 6.5 inches 2520 x 1080, 21:9 422 ppi 2600 nits peak brightness 120 Hz (adaptive) processor Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy (3nm) memory and storage 16 GB of memory with 1 TB of internal storage 16 GB of memory with 512 GB of internal storage Not compatible with microSD rear camera 12 MP Ultra Wide Angle, Dual Pixel AF, F2.2, 1.4 μm, 120° 200 MP wide angle, autofocus, OIS, F1.7, 85˚, 2x optical quality zoom 10 MP PDAF telephoto, OIS, F2.4, 1.0 μm, 36˚, 3x optical zoom, up to 30x digital zoom front camera 10 MP F2.2, 1.12 μm, 85˚ selfie (outdoor screen) 10 MP F2.2, 1.12 μm, 100˚ selfie (indoor screen) battery and charging 5,600 mAh QC2.0 and AFC connectivity 5G LTE Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 operating system Android 16 One UI 8 others IP48 resistance price From 3,594,000 won The promise of a 10-inch tablet, and the price you pay for it To fully understand what this Galaxy Z TriFold proposes, we must stop at its physical approach. We are not looking at a conventional folding device, but rather a device with three panels and two folds that only supports two real ways of use: closed, like a phone, or completely open, “like a 10-inch tablet.” Unlike the approach we have seen in the Huawei Matewhere it is possible to use the device partially deployed with two active panels, there is no middle ground here. When you use it unfolded and the interior screen becomes the center of the experience, the TriFold begins to justify its approach. We are talking about a 10-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with 2160 x 1584 resolution, 120 Hz and a density of 269 ppi, figures that explain why it feels so visually solid indoors. My contact with the device has been in the Samsung offices, in the evening and with artificial light, and in that context the experience has been excellent, with vivid colors and constant fluidity. It is true that the maximum brightness of the interior panel is 1600 nits, compared to 2600 nits for the exterior screen, but I have not had the opportunity to test it outdoors. When you leave content consumption, the TriFold lets itself be loved in multitasking scenarios. The screen offers real margin to maintain multiple applications open at the same time without the experience feeling limited, something that marks a distance from smaller folding products. Everything is more comfortable and less compressed, and the whole thing conveys a sense of order that is appreciated. It also seems relevant to me that it allows executing Samsung DeX directly on the screen itself, without an external monitor, because it reinforces your productivity focus. Now, in the hand, the Galaxy Z TriFold makes it clear from the first moment that it is not a light or discreet device when closed. With its 309 grams and a thickness of 12.9 mm when folded, it feels powerful, even more than one would expect when reading the technical sheet. That said, it is also worth putting it in perspective, because in numbers it does not go to the most extreme part of what we have seen in first generation folding devices. Opened, the perception changes noticeably, the weight is better distributed and the whole is surprisingly manageable for a 10-inch screen. One of the elements that caught my attention during the test was the way in which the TriFold manages its own folding. It is not just a question of hinges, but of how the device conditions the user’s gesture to protect itself. The route is clearly defined and if you try to close it incorrectly, the phone responds with a vibration and a warning on the screen that tells you not to continue there, something that reinforces the feeling of being in front of a product designed to avoid errors. Although the interior screen is the TriFold’s great attraction, it is also its most delicate part. When unfolded, the two folds are there and are part of the experience, although not in an intrusive way. It is not something that is constantly obvious and, in many moments, you can forget about them, but when you change the angle or the light hits it in a certain way they appear. In my case, for years the folds have bothered me a lot in folding ones, but over time I have learned to … Read more

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.