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Beyond prices and vacation rentals, housing in Madrid faces a huge problem: irregular houses

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Beyond price escalation, the pressure of the vacation rental or the decoupling Between the speed at which homes are created and new buildings built, in Madrid the real estate market faces a tricky challenge: irregular developments. The latest data of the Community of Madrid reveal that in the region there are dozens of settlements of illegal origin that bring together thousands of homes that start from an irregular situation. all one hot potato for administration. What has happened? The data has revealed it The Newspaper. The Community of Madrid has registered almost 200 developments built without the necessary permits, settlements of illegal origin that add up to thousands of homes. The calculation is based on an update of the inventory from the 1980s, when 136 irregular settlements were identified. The figure has changed since then for two reasons. The first, because there were nuclei that have managed to regularize themselves. The second, because the technicians have added to the list others that (for one reason or another) did not appear in the catalog that accompanied the 1985 regulations. What do the figures say? If you walk around Madrid you can find dozens of housing units built without respecting the regulations. Some very populous. Specifically, The Newspaper talks about 184 urbanizations or settlements of illegal origin and some 10,500 homes. The figure is partly explained because the 1980s census incorporated almost a hundred new consolidated residential areas. The Ministry of the Environment clarifies that in most cases they are the result of “urbanization processes outside the law” and “lacking planning”, which explains why they often do not offer “minimum conditions for urbanization.” Are all cases the same? Not at all. Not all urbanizations identified by the Community of Madrid are the same nor do they have the same dimensions. Particularly noteworthy is the settlement of La Vega del Tajuñawhich brings together a large part of the residences in an irregular situation detected by regional technicians. Specifically, there are 5,513 distributed over more than 2,700 hectares. With those dimensions it would be the largest settlement of its kind in the community, although not the only one where hundreds of people live. In Camino Viejo de Madrid and Vega Baja del Guadarrama there are also more than 1,400 buildings and there are others, such as El Rondelo, Pico Valsarón or Dehesa Nueva, with hundreds of homes. The Community has also noted constructions located in locations very close to the capital, such as Improved Field. How is that possible? The circumstances and context are not always the same, but a few days ago EPE visited a nucleus of Mejorada del Campo that helps to understand how settlements like this can be formed in the heart of Madrid. Specifically, the newspaper visited a nucleus that began to form in the 1980s, driven by developers who parceled out rural land and sold the land at affordable prices, offering it as an ideal space for “urban gardens” with access to water. Time, use and the increasing pressure that affect housing prices in Madrid did the rest. What were initially huts designed for tools gave way to more ambitious installations. Is it something new? Not at all. And not only because the history of these settlements can go back a long time. At the end of 2025, the Community of Madrid has already issued a statement in which he recalled that in just four years he had inspected 1,906 “irregular constructions” on protected land. To be precise, the regional government spoke of 5,334.3 hectares “affected by this type of settlements”, also identified in 56 municipalities. “Of them, about 80% are concentrated in the plains of the main Madrid rivers, the majority in the areas of the Tajuña River (2,712.5 hectares), followed by the Jarama (1,019.5), Guadarrama (363.2) and Tajo (150.2)”, explains the Madrid Executive, which warns of the “risk” it represents “both for people and the environment.” Hence, this type of construction appears among the objectives of the Urban Inspection and Discipline Plan. Does it only happen in Madrid? No. Settlements of this type are also common in other parts of Spain, such as Catalonia. “There are many urbanizations that were built in the 60s, 70s and early 80s of the 20th century, which were marketed without the necessary planning, urban management or basic public services,” recognize from the Catalan Generalitat. “Of the 1,433 identified in the 2015 catalogue, there are 730 with urban deficits. Many are concentrated in small municipalities and the tendency to convert housing estates into primary residences aggravates their situation,” acknowledges the regional government. The topic is complex because, as remember EPE When talking about the Madrid case, the legal framework varies over time: if a home built on non-developable land remains long enough outside the ‘radar’ of the authorities, the crime expires and can no longer be demolished. Images | Community of Madrid Via | The Newspaper In Xataka | Madrid believed itself immune to the TukTuk plague in the most tourist cities in the world. Now someone wants to ban them

There are many wireless alternatives to the HDMI cable. The problem is that none of them work as well as the HDMI cable.

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That the tangle of cables in our homes is well organized is something that it makes us obsessed for years. Normally, when we talk about cable management we usually refer to the workspace, but we also can be a problem in our salonswhere there are cables that no matter how much we try to replace them, they are still there. One of them is HDMI. Although there are technologies to be able to watch content on a television or projector without having to pull a physical cable, HDMI cable is still the best and sometimes only option. Alternatives to HDMI cable HDMI cables have the drawbacks of any cable: they limit mobility, cause visual clutter and, depending on the device we want to connect, it is very likely that we will need adapters. Fortunately there are technologies that allow us to do without it. Chromecast and Airplay Google TV Streamer, formerly known as Chromecast They are the most popular and well-known options since they have the support of large companies such as Google and Apple. More and more televisions integrate both systems, so it is no longer necessary to purchase a separate device. In the case of Chromecast classic, technically not a wireless solution, But it does allow us to launch the content we want to see without having to use one expressly to connect the mobile phone to the TV. Miracast Smart View on a Samsung mobile. Image: Xataka Home One of the solutions that has tried to replace HDMI is Miracastusually known as Mirror screen or Smart View on Samsung phones. It is a protocol that works through Wi-Fi Direct It allows two devices to detect each other and we can mirror the screen of one on the other. This point is important since it only works in mode mirroringthat is, that clone screen contentit does not extend it or play a video from an app like a Chromecast does. With Miracast, if you want to watch a video that you have saved on your mobile on TV, you will have to leave your cell phone on and the same video playing on it. The advantage is that it is a cross-platform standard and allows you to send FullHD video with almost no latency. That’s when it works well, because Connection problems are quite common. Wireless HDMI Kits If you can’t (or don’t want to) run an HDMI cable to a display or projector, a solution may be to use a wireless kit. It consists of an emitter that sends the AV signal wirelessly to a receiver, which will be connected to the destination device, such as the TV. There are quite a few options available at relatively affordable prices, such as this one from UGREEN that costs less than 60 euros or a little more expensive, like this one from VENTION for 119 euros. The problem with these types of solutions is mainly the interference and, above all, latency. In addition, they have limitations such as lack of HDR support and many do not support 4K video. HDMI is still necessary Although there are alternatives without cable, they are just that, alternatives, not substitutes. Yes, there are proposals that improve HDMI, such as GPMI standard developed by an organization of more than 50 Chinese companies. This interface promises transfers of up to 192Gbps and supports 8K video, but even if it manages to displace HDMI You still need a cable. There are no wireless alternatives that improve the performance and stability of a physical HDMI cable, especially in scenarios where latency is key such as competitive video games. Whether on the console or the PC, the cable will always be the preferred system in this case. It is also best if you are interested in obtaining the best video and audio quality, for example when connecting a home cinema system, and you prioritize connection stability. Of course, you have to choose the cable well and the port to which we connect it to get the most out of it. Image | Xataka In Xataka | The curse of hotels are TVs that do not allow you to use the HDMI port. The solution is obvious: hack them

In 1987 he had a problem displaying images on his Mac, so he created an app. Today it is the most used image editor in history

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Maybe with Nano Banana There are people who have banished Photoshop, but the image editor is the tool that has accompanied photography professionals for decades, almost on par with their camera. In fact, it achieved something only within the reach of very few technological products: becoming a verb and even enter the dictionary. We Photoshop an image and Google it on the internet. Like many other milestones, Photoshop was born by chance: It was the result of a screen that did not know how to show grays. In figures. In these almost 40 years of Photoshop’s life, the editor has been accumulating astronomical data of its progress. Its launch price in 1990 was $895. No joke, it would be equivalent to $2,100 today. It has never been a home software but a professional one. Adobe closed last year with record turnover of 23.77 billion dollars. In 2024 billing was of 21,510 million dollars, of which subscriptions represented 20,521 million dollars. In 2013 Adobe played all its cards on the subscription. Time has proven him right: in twelve years it went from 4,000 million annual billing to almost 24 billion in 2025. How it all started. It’s 1987 and Thomas Knoll was pursuing a doctorate at the University of Michigan in computer vision. Then he had a problem: his Mac Plus had a monochrome screen unable to display grayscale images, only pure black and white. So he wrote a few lines of code to fix it. He called it Display. His little program did the trick, but that was it: he had no intention of commercializing it. The one who did have a nose for the business was his brother John, who at that time worked at Industrial Light & Magic (George Lucas’ company in charge of making Star Wars special effects): convinced him to develop the entire program. Brothers and partners, they sold the license to Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1988. From layers to AI. Photoshop 1.0 would see the light of day in February 1990 as an editor that required only 2MB of RAM and an 8 MHz processor to run, the minimum specifications for a Mac. To put it in context: today Photoshop recommends 16GB of RAM, 8,000 times more. It included tools as iconic to its users as the lasso or the magic wand. But if there was a technical leap that made the difference, those were the very useful capes: they arrived in 1994 with Photoshop 3.0. Before layers, the editor was destructive: each change overwrote the original image. Almost 20 years later, another functional milestone would arrive: the arrival of AI with Generative Fillthat is, being able to add or delete objects with a prompt. Despite the controversy over authorship and the future of retouchingits numbers were incontestable: in April of last year it had already generated more than 22,000 million images since its launch, according to Adobe. The risky move to the subscription model. Before the tricky decision to include AI in its suite, Adobe made another risky move: in 2013 and when we had still succumbed in subscriptionocracyannounced that it would stop selling its Photoshop on a license forever and start renting it. At that time almost 50,000 customers signed a petition against of this decision and its shares fell 12%. Once again, time and pocketbooks seem to have proven them right: they have multiplied their income by six. In Xataka | 16 years ago a student from Barcelona was looking for an easy way to edit PDFs. The website he created is one of the most viewed on the internet In Xataka | 30 years ago he created a player for the university: today his app has more than 6 billion downloads and is still free and without ads Cover | University of Michigan

Science is clear that being a good person gives happiness. The problem is the hidden cost of “overdoing it”

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Since we were little, society has bombarded us with a very clear message: you have to be good people. It’s a moral imperative, yes, but over the past few decades science has attempted to answer a much more pragmatic question: does being kind to others have a real impact on our happiness? This is where A group of researchers wanted to give an answer. What we know. The answer to this question is ‘yes’ according to the latest articles that have been published on the matter. But we must keep in mind that taking kindness to the extreme, leaving our ‘skin’ for others without attending to our own needs, has a real impact that translates into burnout and also in a great emotional exhaustion. And surely, some people can see themselves very reflected in these concepts of literally being very ‘burned out’ for being very kind to others and attending to all the favors they ask of you without thinking about oneself. The positive part. The idea that “good people are happier” is not a simple phrase of Mr. Wonderfulbut it is a conclusion with solid empirical support, especially in the field of positive psychology. Here the researchers were able to see, for example, in a Japanese sample that happier people performed more daily acts of kindness. What’s more, they found that forcing people to simply “count” their own kind acts for a week measurably increased their happiness. There are more studies. Beyond this case, which is very classic, the bibliography leaves us with a great meta-analysis that reviewed decades of research to conclude that help, donate or support others is consistently associated with persistently higher well-being, even if modest in some cases. Something that was also demonstrated in the experimental works of Sonja Lyubomirskywhich made it clear that assigning a group of people the task of “performing acts of kindness” significantly increases their well-being compared to control groups. The negative part. If being good is so positive… Should we give ourselves to others without limit? The answer here is a resounding ‘no’. As has always been heard, the middle ground is where virtue lies, since reaching absolute altruism causes compassion fatigue and burnout. And it is no wonder, because altruism taken to the extreme, especially in highly demanding contexts, is dangerous. The studies on health professionals and caregivers clearly show that high exposure to the suffering of others, combined with a strong compassionate orientation but without clear limits, triggers the risk of psychological collapse and, therefore, serious problems such as anxiety. Its consequences. An empirical study on altruism that exists among co-workers revealed that, although constantly helping colleagues encourages cooperation, in the long term it is associated with great emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of the relationship. That is, the system collapses if aid becomes chronic and absorbs own resources. And the problem is that when people are very compassionate with the rest of the world, they are usually incapable of being very compassionate with themselves and have much greater wear and tear. Here empathy needs a protective shield that is nothing more nor less than a series of limits regarding interpersonal relationships. Although logically there are cases that are difficult to mark because we tend to be too kind. The society. To fully understand the picture of human goodness, one must do zoom out since it is not about what we do individually, but about the ecosystem where we are living. Here the World Happiness Report 2025 dedicate an entire chapter to analyze on a global level how kindness and happiness interact. And their conclusions are revealing, since they point out that the greatest predictor of individual happiness is not the frequency with which we do good acts, but the expectation that others will do good things too. In this case, the report gives a very illustrative example: the expectation that, if you lose your wallet, a stranger will return it to you. Here, believing in the goodness of others has a brutal impact on reducing inequality of happiness within a country, and as the SDSN network points out In their adaptation of the data for Spain, “believing in the goodness of others is much more related to happiness than previously thought.” Images | Brooke Cagle In Xataka | If the question is “where is the secret to happiness,” an expert believes it is hidden in these 15 statements

The problem with microrobots is that they don’t have a “brain.” The solution has been to use Einstein’s relativity to guide them

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Making robots the size of a piece of human hair is already a reality, but it faces a big problem: they are too small to bring a “brain” on board. And it is logical, since on a microscopic scale there is no space to insert a microchip, batteries or navigation systems, so in a few words we can talk about “dumb robots” that only react to basic stimuli. But here the Einstein’s relativity has given a small solution. The solution. One of the functions of these small robots is precisely in be able to navigate the bloodstream to react to different stimuli. But the big question here is how they can navigate a bloodstream without colliding with each other. Something that was on the mind of a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania what have you seen that the key is not in making robots smarter, but in manipulating the “spacetime” through which they move. To understand this thread, you have to think about how gravity works according to the theory of general relativity. Here Einstein taught us that planets do not revolve around the sun because an invisible force pulls them, but because the mass of the Sun curves the fabric of spacetime, as with the Earth, which follows the easiest path through that curved space. To biology. Here the researchers wanted to apply this same mathematical principle to microrobotics, introducing the concept of “artificial spacetimes”. And since microscopic robots move in response to light, the scientists designed light fields projected onto a Petri dish that mimic the curvature of spacetime. In this way, the variations in light they faced acted like “artificial gravity.” In this way, the robot does not need to know where it is or where it is going. It simply turns on and moves forward, since it is the light pattern that “pushes” it to curve its path to avoid obstacles or find the exit from a maze, exactly like a ray of light curves when passing near a massive object in the cosmos. It seems like magic. In the experiment proposed by the researchers, different two-dimensional light labyrinths are projected. In this virtual scenario, they created dark areas that mathematically act as “black holes”, since when the microrobot approaches these areas, the equations that govern your response to light They are formally identical to those of the path of light falling through an extreme gravitational field. In this way, when the microrobot approaches these areas, the equations that govern its response to light are formally identical to those of the path of light falling through an extreme gravitational field. From here, using mapping, scientists managed to get these robots to ‘patrol’ specific areas, avoid obstacles and group together at an exact point. And the most interesting thing is that all this happens without a single processing chip on board the robot, since the “calculation” falls entirely on the geometry of the projected environment. A future doctor. The implications of this advance will now allow microrobots to be freed from the need to have a computer system inside them, which means they can be manufactured cheaply and even made even smaller. From here opens the door to very important medical applicationssince millions of these “reactive robots” can be injected into the human body. The objective here is to use external fields such as magnetic fields that act as a curved spacetime that allows them to move through our circulatory system to release a drug, clean arteries or perform biopsies at the cellular level. Images | Ruben Sukatendel In Xataka | Robots have a problem that no one has solved in decades: they get lost. A Spanish engineer believes she has found the key

If Ukraine promoted the use of drones, Iran has triggered the Terminator algorithm. And that was already a problem in science fiction

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In the gulf war 1991, the international coalition took more than a month to launch some 100,000 airstrikes after weeks of planning. Three decades later, the ability to process military information has changed radically: satellites, sensors and drones generate amounts of data that no human team could analyze alone. In this new technological environment, the true battlefield is no longer just the air or the land, but the speed at which information is interpreted. From the drone to the algorithm. Recent wars had already anticipated a profound transformation of modern combat, but the conflict with Iran seems to have crossed a different technological frontier. If the war in ukraine popularized the massive use of drones as a dominant tool from the battlefield, the campaign against Iran has introduced a logical even more radical: integration artificial intelligence at the very heart of military decisions. In fact, the initial attacks showed an intensity difficult to imagine just a few years ago, with hundreds of targets hit in a matter of hours and thousands in a few days. That speed was not only the result of greater firepower, but also of the use of capable systems of analyzing enormous volumes of data and transforming that information into almost instantaneous attack plans. Understanding the “kill chain”. I remembered this morning the financial times that traditional war, the so-called chain of destruction (from identifying a target to launching the attack) was a long and bureaucratic process. Intelligence officers analyzed information, wrote reports, commanders evaluated options and finally the coup was authorized. A process that could take hours or even days. The incorporation of AI is reducing that cycle drastically. We are talking about platforms that integrate data from satellites, drones, sensors and intercepted communications that are capable of generating lists of targets, prioritizing them and suggesting the appropriate weapon in a matter of seconds. The result is extreme and disturbing compression of the kill chain: What once required prolonged deliberation now becomes an almost instantaneous sequence. The digital brain of the battlefield. Behind this acceleration are data analysis systems that act as a true operational “brain.” These platforms combine geospatial intelligence, machine learning and advanced language models to interpret information and propose military actions. Its most disruptive capacity is that it no longer only summarizes data, but can reason step by stepevaluate alternatives and generate tactical recommendations. This allows military commanders to process volumes of information that are impossible to handle manually and multiply the number of operational decisions made in the same period of time. In practice, algorithms are allowing select and execute objectives at a scale and speed that were previously unthinkable. Bomb faster than thought. The result of this transformation is a war that begins to move at a rapid speed. higher than human pace. Artificial intelligence can now analyze information, detect patterns and propose attacks faster than a team of analysts could even formulate the right questions. Some experts describe This phenomenon as a form of “compressed decision,” in which planning is reduced to such short windows of time that human managers can barely review what the machine has already processed. In this context, another disturbing idea: that destruction can precede the human reflection process itself, that is, first comes the recommendation generated by the algorithm and then the formal approval of the person who must execute it. And there, there is no doubt, we can have a problem of colossal dimensions. The human dilemma in algorithmic warfare. Because this technological acceleration is generating a growing debate about the real role of humans in military decision-making. Although the armed forces they insist As final control remains in the hands of people, the time available to evaluate system recommendations is increasingly reduced. Some analysts fear that this will lead to a form of “cognitive download”one in which military leaders end up automatically trusting the decisions generated by algorithms. Other countries like China itself observe this evolution with concern and warn of the risk that automated systems end up directly influencing life or death decisions on the battlefield, associating the scenario with the closest thing to the “Terminator algorithm” due to the unequivocal way in which all paths approach James Cameron’s fantastic proposal. A new accelerated war. If you will also, what is emerging is not just a new military technology, but rather a new time of the war. AI makes it possible to process information on a massive scale, identify targets more quickly, and execute attacks with unprecedented simultaneity. This means that military campaigns can develop at a pace that overflows the models traditional planning. From this perspective, war no longer advances solely at the pace of logistics or firepower, but at the pace of algorithms capable of interpreting the battlefield in real time. And in this unprecedented scenario, strategic advantage could increasingly depend on who is able to think (or calculate) faster than the adversary. Although neither of them be human. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine In Xataka | China has just found a hole in the US’s quietest weapon: an algorithm has hacked its B-2s in Iran In Xataka | The great paradox of war: the US ignored Ukraine’s pleas to Russia and now needs it in Iran

Getting married in Switzerland was equivalent to paying more taxes than a single person. And a referendum has put an end to the problem

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In Switzerland, marriages they are news. And not because of its rise or fall, demographic issues or new trends when celebrating them. They are for strictly tax reasons. In a historic decision the Swiss have supported majority (with 54% support) a reform that will basically put an end to what is called the “marriage penalty” in the country. In other words, saying ‘I do’ in Switzerland will no longer be (in most cases) a sentence to paying more when declaring income to the Treasury. The decision has come preceded by an intense debate, which gives a clue that the issue does not only have fiscal implications. The background is social, cultural and historical. What has happened? That after years of debate Switzerland has given the ‘green light’ to a key tax change for marriages. Couples in the country who formalize their relationship will stop paying taxes jointly, through a single tax return in which the sum of their income and assets is taken into account. From now on, each spouse will be taxed individually. Just as if he hadn’t gone through the altar. The measure has received the endorsement of 54% of voters during a referendum in which they have discussed more topicsbut it does not mean that it will be activated immediately. The idea is that it be adopted gradually, over the next five years. The cantons have margin until 2032. Is it so important? Yes. In fact in Switzerland (and other countries who have paid attention to the fiscal change) there is no talk of joint or individual taxation, but of something much more forceful: the end of the “marriage penalty”. Because? Because according to its promoters, the current Swiss tax regime punishes those marriages in which both spouses work and enjoy good salaries. In these cases, with the current system, couples are forced to bear greater burdens than they would face if they remained single. That is, the same couple can find themselves in one or another tax bracket (more or less beneficial) depending only on whether they have formalized their relationship. Why’s that? Basically because the Swiss system is a few decades old and is based on a traditional family model in which each household has a single base salary. If the family receives more income (a second payroll) they are usually taxed at a higher marginal rate. “The joint model came from a time when women’s income was considered a ‘complement’ to that of their husbands,” clarify Swiss Info. With the new system, that changes. Does it influence that much? What we have seen so far may sound abstract or too theoretical, but its scope is better understood with practical examples. In January Swiss Info carried out a simulation for different profiles of households with one or another tax system and found that the ‘photo’ changes quite a bit. The summary is very simple: new tax model It mainly benefits marriages in which both spouses earn the same or similar amounts and harms (forcing them to face a greater tax burden) those in which there is a greater imbalance of income between the members of the couple. A practical example. Let’s take the case of a couple in which both members earn the same: 100,000 francs. With the joint model that has been operating in Switzerland for years, its tax burden would be about 6,700 francs. With the new individual taxation system it would drop to 2,700. Things change in couples in which there is only one salary. In these cases (with the same level of income) individual taxation will mean an increase of 32% compared to joint taxation. What is the change looking for? Its promoters assure that the new model will solve a problem that has been dragging down the Swiss economy for some time: a tax system that discourages paid work for those people who provide a second income to their homes. When changing the legal framework, remember Financial Timesthe Swiss government hopes to increase the nation’s workforce by about 60,000 people and increase the national GDP by about 1%. Advocates of the change hope it will help women gain strength in the Swiss labor market. It is estimated that only 60% of Swiss women work full time, a percentage lower than the OECD average, which is around 78%. The “marriage penalty” has also led to some curious practicessuch as couples who marry without legally registering their union or even marriages that they divorce before retiring for tax reasons. Are they all advantages? Not at all. At least that is what the sectors most critical of the measure maintain, warning of several negative effects. The main one, that the new system will result in more bureaucracyincreasing the workload (and costs) of the administration. There are cantons that also fear that the change of model will affect their coffers, punishing them with a loss of income. Beyond the practical issues there is another ideological one: part of the critical sector warns that individual supervision will generate inequalities that will harm traditional families above all. According to the Government, the new framework will more or less half of the taxpayers see their tax burden reduced. 36% would not notice changes and only the remaining 14% will have to pay more taxes. Images | Leonardo Miranda (Unsplash), Ronnie Schmutz (Unsplash) and Leo_Visions (Unsplash) In Xataka | 40,000 euros to say “yes, I want”: weddings in Spain have become events and their price is skyrocketing

how to check if it is down or if it is your problem

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Let’s tell you how to tell if claude is down and it doesn’t work because of a bug that is happening to everyone. Like any other online service, artificial intelligence as Claude They can also have problems and fall. They can be specific errors that are solved immediately or larger ones that take hours to solve. When this is the case, there is always a moment of confusion in which you doubt whether it is a general error or just your fault, and we are going to tell you how to do this check. These crashes can be due to problems with the servers, a cyber attack and many other reasons, but the first thing is always to check if it has really crashed or if the problem is yours. How to check if Claude is down To check if Claude suffers a general fall, you will have to use one of the websites specialized in detecting these problems that can occur. These are websites in which users report drops, and you can see the level of these reports in a graph. When the graph goes up a lot, it’s because there is a massive problem. It’s not you, everyone is reporting these bugs. The best option on Claude’s profile on Down Detector, which you can access on the web downdetector.es/problemas/claude-ai. Here you can see in real time the number of problems reported by users in the last 24 hours. The higher the reporting curve, the bigger and more people the fall will be affecting. You can also search for information on some social networks such as Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon or When you see that the fall is general, there is nothing you can do to solve it. You will have to wait for Claude’s owners or the downed service to fix the problem. It is also convenient that pay attention to a possible communication after solving it in which they give some kind of explanation. In these communications they should clarify the type of error they have had, and even warn if it is due to a hack that has exposed user data. In Xataka Basics | The best prompts to save hours of work and do your tasks with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or other artificial intelligence

OpenAI wanted to make ChatGPT the ideal GP. The problem is that he’s wrong half the time.

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OpenAI started the year with a new release: ChatGPT health mode. Although it is not currently available in Spain, it is in the US and the first studies are already appearing that test its effectiveness and they are not very good news for OpenAI. It’s not that big of a deal. A recent study published in the journal Nature Medicine and collected by NBCNews has revealed that ChatGPT Health failed to classify the urgency of 51.6% of the emergency medical cases analyzed. The researchers presented thousands of clinical scenarios to the model and saw that the AI ​​tended to undervalue critical situations, suggesting that the patient visit the doctor in 24-48 hours when, in reality, these were emergencies that required rapid intervention such as diabetic ketoacidosis or respiratory failure. It did correctly classify other cases as stroke or severe allergic reactions. It doesn’t make sense. Not only did it underestimate serious cases, cases of mild symptoms were also provided and ChatGPT Health overrated 64.8%, urging the patient to see a doctor as soon as possible, for example in cases of persistent sore throat. Dr. Ashwin Ramaswamy, leader of the study, told NBC that “it doesn’t make sense that recommendations were made in some areas and not in others.” Suicidal ideas. There is still more. The cases presented included some with suicidal ideations. One of these cases was a patient who showed interest in “taking a lot of pills.” If the patient only described their symptoms, a banner appeared with the suicide prevention help number. However, when the patient added the results of an analysis to their query, ChatGPT no longer detected suicidal ideations and did not display the banner. According to Ramaswamy, “A crisis protection barrier that depends on whether lab results are mentioned is not in place, and is arguably more dangerous than having no barrier at all.” Why it is important. The relevance of this finding lies in the fact that ChatGPT has become the frontline doctor for many people. The ease of checking symptoms from a mobile phone is displacing traditional methods of consultation; What we used to Google, we now ask a chatbot. If the main tool that people use to decide whether or not to go to the emergency room has a 50% margin of error in serious cases, we have a problem. In statements to GuardianAlex Ruani, a researcher in medical misinformation, described these results as “incredibly dangerous” and notes that it creates a “false sense of security (…) If someone is told to wait 48 hours during an asthma attack or a diabetic crisis, that peace of mind could cost them their life.” OpenAI responds. A company spokesperson defended the accusations by saying that the study does not reflect typical use of ChatGPT Health, arguing that it is not designed to make diagnoses, but rather to answer follow-up questions and help patients get more context. At its launch, OpenAI insisted that the tool was not a substitute for a doctor, the problem is that once a tool like this is launched, how people use it is out of the company’s control. Flattery and hallucinations. Chatbots have a flattery problem and they tend to agree with the user. On the other hand there is the phenomenon of hallucinations. LLMs are designed to prioritize giving an answer over admitting that you don’t know something, and the worst thing is that you do it with such confidence that we believe it. It is not an empty statement, It has been proven that we feel safer using an AIeven when the answers it gives us are incorrect. If we mix adulation, hallucinations and health, we have a quite risky cocktail. Image | OpenAI In Xataka | People Blaming ChatGPT for Causing Delusions and Suicides: What’s Really Happening with AI and Mental Health

In 2022, the gas crisis skyrocketed the price of electricity in Spain. In 2026 we have a “green shield” but also a serious problem

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Just when in Spain we began to breathe a sigh of relief, convinced that we had overcome the inflationary trauma of 2022 “after cutting energy ties” with Russia, history repeats itself. This week a “black Monday” began that has shaken international markets. This time the epicenter is not in eastern Europe, but in the Persian Gulf, after the recent attacks that have been forced to paralyze QatarEnergy facilities. The impact on our country has been devastating. According to data collected in OMIEthe price of electricity in the wholesale market has jumped 60% in just 24 hours, climbing to 90.14 euros per megawatt hour (MWh). To put it in perspective, this represents a 1,300% increase in price compared to what we paid just a month ago. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has already warned that We must prepare for a “long war” with serious global economic consequences. And the fear is already palpable in the street with the long lines that yesterday we observed of drivers trying to fill their tank at gas stations low cost before prices continue to rise. If the gas goes up, why does the electricity go up? To understand why a conflict thousands of kilometers away makes our electricity more expensive almost instantly, you have to look at how our system works. As explained The Confidential in a very didactic way: the European electricity market is “marginalist”. This means that the most expensive technology that needs to be used to cover the demand of a specific day is the one that sets the final price of all energy. If the sun or wind is not enough and the gas plants have to be turned on, all electricity is paid for at the price of gas. And the gas, right now, is trapped in a war funnel. As we have already explained these days20% of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) and 25% of the world’s oil transit through the Strait of Hormuz (the epicenter of the current tension). Any threat of a blockade in that area generates a domino effect that triggers reference prices in Europe. The energy expert Joaquín Coronado explained in LinkedIn that this panic is already real: The prices of electricity futures for the rest of 2026 have suddenly risen by 24%. As he himself points out, “only the price of gas has changed,” but that is enough to drag down the entire system. The hit in the pocket. All this macroeconomics lands directly in the bank account of citizens. As pointed out The Countrythere are more than 11 million users in Spain who have regulated rates (the PVPC for electricity and the TUR for gas) who will notice this increase almost immediately, since their contracts reflect the daily fluctuations of the market. The calculations about what this crisis is going to cost us are already on the table: The OCU, in statements to The Newspaperestimates that if these prices are maintained, the average electricity bill with a regulated rate will jump from the 62 euros we paid in February to around 82 euros in March. An increase of 30% in a single month. A platform report Roams figures the monthly impact about 12 euros extra for electricity (17% more) and increases of up to 18% on the gas bill. The worst scenario is drawn the comparator Selectra: If the conflict drags on and we return to the panic levels of 2022, the electricity bill could skyrocket by 200%. But energy is just the first domino. Financial Times collect warnings from the chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), who already assumes a short-term rebound in general inflation. As oil rises, transportation rises: from fuel at the pump (gas stations already assume extra costs of 12 cents per liter) to maritime freight of goods and plane tickets, which on some routes to Asia have quadrupled in price. So, are we the same as in 2022? The good news is that we are not exactly at the same starting point as when the Ukrainian war broke out. As analyzed elDiario.esSpain today has three “mattresses” that cushion the first impact: the arrival of spring (which reduces the use of heating), some reservoirs 83% full (which allow generate a lot of hydroelectric energy cheap) and an electric mix where more than 50% of energy is already renewable. Furthermore, the PVPC formula was recently renovated so that it does not depend only on the daily market, softening the extreme peaks a little. The bad news is that we have exchanged one problem for another. To stop depending on Russia, we throw ourselves into the arms of the United States. As the economist José Carlos Díez warns in the chain Vibe Zero44% of the gas we consume today comes from the US. This places us in a position of extreme vulnerability to the new geopolitical “black swan”: the anger of Donald Trump. The refusal of the Spanish Government to give up the military bases of Rota and Morón for the offensive against Iran has caused Trump to threaten to cut off all trade with Spain. If the United States turns off the tap on LNG ships, José Carlos Díez warnsSpain does not have the physical capacity or infrastructure to replace a supplier that gives us almost half of our gas from one day to the next. The social shield and our pending duties. Faced with the threat of the crisis becoming entrenched, the Government is already moving. According to Expansion, If the conflict lasts more than four weeks, Pedro Sánchez’s Executive has on the table reactivating the “social shield” of previous crises: reductions in VAT on electricity, fuel discounts and direct aid. However, fiscal patches do not hide the underlying problems. In Xataka We have put our finger on two great absurdities of our system. On the one hand, we are an “energy island” since we have seven regasification plants capable of receiving ships from all over the world and helping Europe, but we do … Read more

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