promises

An app promises to free men from their “addiction” to porn. Behind it is something darker: the NoFap movement

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“Embrace this pause. Reflect before you relapse.” It doesn’t refer to alcohol or drugs, but to porn. With this claim, Quittr is presented, an app for people looking for overcome your porn addiction. Although you can register as a woman, the app is clearly focused on the male audience, So I pretended to be Manuel 28 and made an account. It didn’t take me long to realize that giving up porn is the excuse to sell something else. As soon as you start, the app asks you a questionnaire about your consumption habits, such as how often you watch porn and what negative symptoms you have noticed in your life (it caught my attention that one of them was “Feeling distant from God”, this already gives clues as to where we are headed). As soon as I finished the questionnaire they already had a personalized plan for Manuel and they also promised me that by June 7 he would have stopped porn. The bad part is that it was going to cost me 31.99 euros per year, 20.99 euros if I accepted the offer. Giving up porn has a price. I haven’t paid, but I have been researching the features that Quittr offers. The app tracks your progress, which is represented by “the tree of life,” and the longer you go without porn, the more it grows. It also offers motivational exercises, has a “panic button” in case you are about to relapse, and also allows you to chat with other members of the community. Based on science, but little Both on the website and in the app itself they say several times that Quittr’s method is based on science, but let’s see if this is the case. As soon as you finish the questionnaire, a message appears that claims that pornography is a drug and that “releases a chemical in the brain called dopamine.” According to the WHO definitiona drug is “a natural or synthetic compound that acts on the central nervous system and produces alterations in the processes that regulate thoughts, emotions, perception and behavior.” Watching porn can generate pleasure, but nothing is being introduced into the body, it is a natural response. In this sense, if pornography is a drug because it “releases dopamine”, we should also consider anything that gives us pleasure a drug, from food to keeping the house tidy. What it can do is cause compulsive consumption, which we could describe as addiction, which is very different. The ICD-11 clinical guide includes “compulsive sexual behavior disorder”, but of course, that sells less. In the app’s description they also state that their method is “based on extensive research into the science of addictions,” but there is no link to any study. The NoFap movement Browsing the web, I have found that there are several influencers who promote the app. Well, they are all Christian fitness content creators such as Jeremiah Jones either Caleb Hammett. When I entered the news blog section it was already clear to me what this was about. Some of the news from Quittr’s blog. He NoFap movement It was born as a kind of support group for people who want to stop masturbation, either because they perceive it as an addiction or also for religious reasons. This idea began to become popular a few years ago and its scientific basis is a study conducted in 2003 which linked increased testosterone levels to abstinence from masturbation. The study was refuted, but continues to be cited in these circles. In the beginning, NoFap followers They were looking to increase their testosterone and improve your health, but Nowadays it has become a lifestyle with a strong religious component. In Spain we have the reference of René ZZ, whose content gave a radical turn from tattoos to religion, personal improvement and the abandonment of masturbation. Applications like Quittr or Relay They are sold as the solution to porn addiction, which is something that many people will see as positive, but they do not highlight the religious part that advocates these rigid and moralistic abstinence models. In slate They tell the story of one of these men who entered NoFap looking to quit porn and ended up trapped in a cycle of relapse and extreme shame that ended up seriously affecting his mental health. Quittr’s other secret In addition to the moralistic component that Quittr hides, there is another fact that has recently become known and it is a security problem in its app. They count in 404media that several hackers notified the creators of the app of a serious vulnerability that exposed the data of its users, among whom there are minors. The failure was no small thing. This was a bug in Google Firebase configuration that allowed anyone to authenticate as an administrator and read the database. User data includes age, how often they watch porn, and even messages about their masturbation habits. The problem is no longer that vulnerability exists, it is that Those responsible for Quittr did nothing for at least six months. The first researcher who notified the company even spoke with the founder of the app Alex Slater, who responded that he would solve it in a matter of hours, but months later it was still not solved. Finally, they reacted when 404media insisted for the third time. Image | Franco Alva in Unsplash In Xataka | There is already a European country that requires you to be 18 years old to watch porn on the Internet. And there are already a thousand ways to skip it

the rain of generics that promises to sink prices in some countries

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The drug that revolutionized the pharmaceutical industry and forever changed the paradigm of the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes, as is Ozempicfaces its biggest challenge: the end of its marketing patent. Specifically, the patent of the semaglutidewhich is the active ingredient behind Ozempic and wegovyexpires in March 2026 in several international markets, opening the door to production of the famous generic drugs which are more affordable. The success of Ozempic. Developed by fDanish firm Novo Nordiskhas been meteoric and originally approved in 2017 for type 2 diabetes, what has really surprised is that its use outside the technical indication is what has exploded: weight loss. And many do not know that it is actually a treatment for diabetes. And it is logical, because the figures that have remained in our conscience are that there are losses of up to 15-20% of body weightwith proven cardiovascular benefits and a multimillion-dollar business behind it. The problem is that the price of this treatment is not at all accessible, even with a medical prescription, and that is why the possibility of developing generics will make it possible to democratize this medication for the most serious cases of obesity. The patents. Developing a drug is not cheap for pharmaceutical companies and that is why, when it is marketed, large companies want to make as much money as possible with the exclusivity that no other laboratory can produce and sell it. But these pharmaceutical patents have a standard life of 20 years, and when they are met, other laboratories can take the ‘recipe’ and create their medications with this active ingredient, but at a lower price as if it were the white label. The map of expiration. In this way, since Novo Nordisk applied for the base patent around 2006, the clock stops in March 2026 for demographic giants like India, China and Brazil. And here there are no extensions that extend commercial exclusivity, so the season automatically begins to open so that any laboratory can begin to produce its own brand. And the impact is immediate in places like India, which are already preparing to immediately market genetics like Obeda or GLIPIQ. The result will be a drop in costs between 80 and 90% to have a price of just 15 to 30 dollars per month for the treatment. Although they are not the first countries to integrate it because in Canada the monopoly fell prematurely in January 2026 due to an administrative error: non-payment of the corresponding fees. What happens in Spain? The ‘cheap Ozempic’ will take longer to reach us, since in the European Union and the United States there are legal mechanisms to compensate for the long clinical trial and regulatory approval times that are imposed. In the particular European case, which is the one that affects us, it is known as Complementary Protection Certificate. Thanks to this exception, Novo Nordisk’s monopoly in Spain and the rest of Europe extends until March 2031, and in the United States it can even be extended until 2033. And it is bad news, because right now in Spain there are 19% of adults with obesity (and it is increasing), so the tension on the public system to finance this treatment does not stop growing. Novo Nordisk’s counterattack. The Danish company is not going to sit idly by watching its goose that lays golden eggs lose market share to Indian and Chinese generics. To maintain part of the economic pie, the company is developing more effective oral versions as they have a higher concentration of semaglutide. On the other hand, their big bet is called CagriSema, which is a combination of GLP-1 and amylin to further enhance weight reduction. All this in order to survive the end of its patent, which now begins in 2026 in large markets and which must be compensated with other alternatives beyond another presentation. In Xataka | Ozempic’s “great rebound”, in figures: science reveals that the weight returns four times faster than with a diet

Elon Musk often promises impossible things like Terafab. The problem is that sometimes he manages to turn them into reality.

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It was up to Elon Musk to revolutionize the automotive industry with Tesla and the electric car. Probably no one believed he could do it. Then he did the same with the aerospace industry with SpaceX, and that was more of the same: it seemed impossible. It may be many things, but the truth is that although Elon Musk promises many things and does not always fulfill them when he says (hello autonomous car), has achieved unimaginable things. That’s why when you talk about Terafab, maybe we should give it a chance. Because this seems almost as impossible as his other feats. Terafab and Musk’s master plan. On Saturday night, from a power plant that has not been used for a long time, Elon Musk advertisement the last of the components of its master plan: Terafab. The objective is to create a chip factory in which Tesla, SpaceX and xAI will collaborate. According to Musk, this plant will be capable of manufacturing between 100 and 200 GW of computing capacity per year on earth, but it will reach 1 TW in space. The problem, as always with Musk, is distinguishing what part of the plan is engineering and what part is theater and fireworks. He doesn’t do it just because. At that event, the magnate explained that semiconductor manufacturers do not produce enough chips for their AI and robotics needs. And since TSMC and the rest of the manufacturers cannot meet Musk’s demand, he has proposed manufacturing them directly. You need them for your robotaxis and your humanoid robots, Optimuswhich he hopes will end up multiplying by 10 or 100 the production rate of his cars. But it also needs chips so that xAI can compete in the field of AI, and SpaceX needs them for its satellites. That is, it actually needs a lot of chips. Many. Chips from space. At Terafab they intend to create two types of chips. On the one hand, there will be those intended for autonomous vehicles or Optimus robots. On the other, the chips that already have their own name, D3, and that will be designed specifically for space, with products that use them that work in low Earth orbit and are powered by solar energy. For Musk, the idea “becomes an obvious decision”: there will come a point where putting payload into orbit is so cheap that host data centers in space It is cheaper than doing it on land because solar energy is practically unlimited there. Too many unknowns. Everything was very nice and promising, but once the speech and promises were over, the questions began. Building a state-of-the-art semiconductor factory is a colossal challenge. It’s not just a matter of money: it’s that advanced chip manufacturing is in the hands of three companies around the world (TSMC, Samsung and Intel), and requires photolithography with UVE technology which is only manufactured by the well-known Dutch company ASML. And here’s the thing, that Musk: Did not announce any agreement with ASML It has not shown orders that demonstrate that it will have these equipment He has not named a technological partner for the project No estimated dates or calendar have been given. And he hasn’t talked about the budget either. It’s all a gigantic unknown. The most ambitious vertical integration in tech history. On several occasions Musk repeated how at Terafab they intend to cover the entire development, manufacturing, packagingtesting and improvement in the same facilities. If we fulfill that promise, we would be facing another unprecedented achievement, because the semiconductor industry has been doing just the opposite for decades: hyperspecialization by different suppliers: some design, others manufacture, others package… Musk wants to do it all, and if he succeeds he will become a direct rival for Samsung or TSMC, which a priori he would no longer need. Promises and realities. This project seems especially diffuse, but with Musk anything is possible, as we have said. In recent years, yes, we have seen how several of his ideas or they have failedor they have been delayed, or they have been left in no man’s land. The robotaxis still haven’t arrived, the Cybertruck arrived late and it’s not settingand companies like The Boring Company or products like Solar Roof have had less reach than they promised, at least for now. Terafab seems like another impossible project from Musk. We’ll see if it ends up not being so. Image | tesla In Xataka | 8 years ago Elon Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into space: it continues to orbit and was mistaken for an asteroid

MicroLED promises to be the Holy Grail of televisions. That is your big problem today.

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There are technologies that are born with enormous promise. He MicroLED is one of them. Since Samsung introduced “The Wall” at CES 2018the sector has been telling us for years that this technology is going to revolutionize the way we watch television. And he is right. The problem is that this revolution has not reached anyone’s living room. who is not a billionaire. The technology has become the Holy Grail of the television industry, but the enormous cost of its manufacture means that only the most exclusive models and, let’s say it without frills, extremely expensive, can integrate this technology. Unlike what has happened with OLED or MiniLED, manufacturers have not managed to reduce production costs of these panels to make them competitive in mass manufacturing. What is MicroLED and why is it so special? To understand MicroLED you have to know how current screens work. Traditional LED TVs have a layer of pixels that filters light coming from an array of LED lights installed on the back. It is, therefore, a backlighting technology that offers very good brightness power. The problem is that when those screens need to display pure black, the screen can’t turn off pixel by pixel, so it turns off areas of those rear LEDs. The more dimming zones you have, the better the light control and the more control over the blacks you have. Even so, it is inevitable that some light will sneak in. It’s not really black. The result is very dark grays at best. The technology OLED solved that problem years ago, making each pixel on the screen emit its own light that can be turned off individually. Here, the result is a perfect contrast, but it has its own limits. The LED diodes that make up each pixel are organic, so they degrade over time and are susceptible to burn-in, leaving a permanent mark on the screen after many hours with a static image on the screen. In this sense, the promise of MicroLED technology is to provide the perfect balance between OLED and LED, but without any of their drawbacks. Like OLED, it uses microscopic LEDs as a pixel, but made with inorganic materials that are much more stable and resistant to burning. In this way, the screens MicroLEDs are capable of reaching OLED contrast levelsbut with a much higher shine and with a useful life that is measured in decades. It is literally the best of all worlds. And there is also its trap. The problem: manufacturing the MicroLED is a nightmare A 4K display has about 8.3 million pixels. In the latest MicroLED panels, each of those pixels needs three individual LEDs, leaving us with almost 25 million microscopic chips that must be manufactured, placed and connected with nanometric precision on a panel the size of a television screen. This level of miniaturization required by MicroLED has limited its production to large-inch formats before the challenge it poses fit so many millions of diodes into a 55″ or 65″ panel. The process of mass transfer of these chips, what the industry calls mass transferis extraordinarily complex, and today, also extraordinarily expensive. How much expensive? To put it in context, one of the few MicroLED models that can be purchased in stores is a 89 inch Samsung and has a sale price of 109,000 euros. He LG Magnitaimed at the extreme luxury market, was around 230,000 euros in sizes of 118 and 136 inches. That price range makes them unviable as home televisions (at least for most mortals’ homes). Hence its market figures are very small at present. In all of 2024, they were manufactured less than 1,000 units of MicroLED televisions in the entire world. Samsung sells that many conventional televisions in a matter of minutes. However, although these panels do not reach the living rooms, it does not mean that the MicroLED is stagnant. In fact, it is in development. This technology is growing strongly in those niches where price matters less than performance. In large format signage it has been the standard for years. film and television studio fundslobbies of luxury buildings or private movie theaters. In automotive, the dashboards of the future want bright, durable and efficient screens. And in the wearables segment and augmented reality, both Apple and Samsung have been investing for some time in bringing MicroLED to smart watches and AR glasses, where extreme pixel density is critical and having smaller production volumes makes the cost more manageable. As indicated in an analysis According to Yole Group, the global MicroLED market could grow to nearly $5 billion in revenue by 2032, although most of that will come from those niche segments, not the living room TV. There are MicroLED and “MicroLED” The high production cost made manufacturers explore other ways to make this technology profitable and evolve. One of the solutions was to use as backlight system behind an LCD panel, rather than as self-emissive pixels. Strictly speaking, although the latter have MicroLED technology, they should not be considered as such. However, some brands use it interchangeably in their trade names for advertising purposes. By having a smaller scale, MicroLEDs allow much better control of light and enhancing the colors, but they still require an LCD panel that separates the colors of each subpixel. That is, it would act more like a MiniLED or a conventional LED than an OLED. The good news is that, as brands showed like Hisense and Samsung have already evolved MicroLED technology with white diodes, towards the RGB MicroLEDwhich already has a self-emissive RGB diode for each pixel that, now, would be closer to the operation of an OLED. This evolution, as before MicroLEDs they made other technologiesrepresents the first sign that these panels are beginning a path of optimization to reduce production costs. In fact, the models launched by Samsung during the last CES 2026 It would be around $30,000.. It seems like an exorbitant figure for a television, but it must be taken into … Read more

Xpeng’s new SUV promises 1,704 km without refueling

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Among the new energy vehicles we have hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric models. However, the borders between these modalities have been blurring according to the needs and the evolution of new technologies. For some time now we have had a category that also has its own benefits: extended range vehicles (EREV). China is one of the main countries that promotes this type of vehicles, and among its main manufacturers, Xpeng Motors has shown how far this technology can go. The company has launched a hybrid version of its G7 SUV that reaches 1,704 kilometers of combined autonomy, establishing a new world record for vehicles of this category, as announced by the Chinese company in its presentation held in Guangzhou. The figure is approximately equivalent to traveling the distance between Madrid and Milan without refueling or recharging. The key to the record. The G7 combines a 55.8 kWh battery with a 1.5-liter combustion engine that acts exclusively as a generator. The manufacturer assures This extended autonomy system allows you to travel up to 430 kilometers in completely electric mode, while the 60-liter gasoline tank provides additional energy to the set. The result is a total range of 1,704 kilometers under the Chinese CLTC homologation cycle, surpassing any SUV on the current market. Technology. Xpeng abandons what until now was a purely electric approach to offer intermediate solutions that respond to the problem of charging infrastructure, as it remains uneven in many markets. The company calls this move “dual powertrain strategy”, which now also applies to the P7+ sedan, presented simultaneously with 1,550 kilometers of combined range. According to declared Xpeng President and CEO He Xiaopeng during the event, the P7+ offers “the longest pure electric range in its class”, with 430 kilometers on battery alone. Advanced equipment. The updated G7 features 800V voltage system with 5C ultra-fast charging, 15.6-inch touch screen, 2.17 square meter panoramic roof and 20-speaker sound system with 7.1.4 surround technology. It also includes seats with electrical adjustment, ventilation, heating and massage. In autonomous driving, the model includes two chips as standard Nvidia Drive Orin with 508 TOPS of computing power, although it can be optionally equipped with the Ultra SE system, which incorporates two Turing AI chips developed by Xpeng, or the Ultra with three Turing chips. International expansion. The commitment to EREV systems coincides with Xpeng’s plans to expand throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. By the end of 2025, the brand operated in 60 global markets and had doubled its exports. to exceed 45,000 units. The company has three production centers outside China (Indonesia, Austria and Malaysia), as confirmed in December. For markets like Europe, where the fast charging network remains irregular in many areas and it will be difficult for us to comply European emissions regulationsEREV models can make a lot of sense. Prices. Both the G7 and the P7+ maintain the same starting price for their pure electric and extended autonomy versions: 195,800 and 186,800 yuan respectively, equivalent to about 26,000 and 25,000 euros in exchange. Beyond cars. During the presentation, Xpeng also showed your artificial intelligence model second generation VLA 2.0 (Vision Language Action), which integrates visual perception, language understanding and generation of actions through reasoning. This system will begin to be implemented in March 2026 in the first vehicles and aims to bring the driving experience closer. at level 4 autonomy. The company is already working on robotaxis equipped with this software that have passed third-party tests and are about to begin trials on public roads. Images | Xpeng In Xataka | Like other brands, Porsche embraced the electric car. Like other brands, it now admits that “we were wrong”

Boston Dynamics starts commercial production while Optimus remains wrapped in promises

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Boston Dynamics has unveiled the product version of Atlas, not a prototype or technical demo. The company describes This humanoid robot as an enterprise-grade system, designed from the ground up to be systematically manufactured, maintained and repaired. In its official communication it insists on concepts such as reliability, field service and prolonged useful life, a clear way of marking distance from more experimental approaches. In this way, Atlas makes the leap into the industrial world, with deployments announced for 2026 and a roadmap that, within the framework of Hyundai’s plans, points to a production capacity of up to 30,000 units per year. Meanwhile, Optimus remains tied to internal testing and automation at Tesla. Elon Musk had projected have “thousands” of humanoid robots working in factories by the end of 2025, but as of today there is no public evidence that the company has reached that goal. A change of stage announced in advance. The move towards a commercial Atlas had been in the works for some time. In 2024 the hydraulic robot stage will be officially closedactive for more than a decade, to give way to a completely electric design aligned with a real deployment. That decision came as recent advances in artificial intelligence accelerated the training and production of complex robots. Hyundai, client and driving force of the deployment. Atlas’ industrial leap is supported by a key corporate relationship. Hyundai Motor Group, the majority shareholder of Boston Dynamics, is also the humanoid robot’s first customer. He assures her that An initial deployment has already been completed in 2025 and an additional fleet is planned to be shipped in 2026 to the Robotics Metaplant Application Center. From there, Hyundai’s industrial investment context points to a possible expansion of scale, although these figures appear as general plans and not as specific commitments directly linked to Atlas. Designed for human environments. Atlas is not conceived as an isolated machine within a closed cell, but as a robot capable of moving through the same spaces in which people already work. Its function is aimed at handling and logistical support tasks in factories and warehouses, sharing an environment with human workers and other automated systems. To make it possible, the design has been optimized for coexistence, with mechanisms that allow detecting the proximity of people and stopping the operation when necessary. For a robot to truly fit into a factory, uptime is as important as the task it performs. Atlas is designed to operate during standard shifts, with an autonomy of approximately four hours in typical use. When the battery runs out, the robot itself can replace it autonomously in less than three minutes and return to work, allowing for continuous operation cycles. The charging system also works with conventional 110 V or 220 V electrical outlets, avoiding costly modifications to the infrastructure. Control, fleets and continuous learning. Atlas is not only intended to act autonomously, but also to integrate into monitoring and control systems at scale. Technically, it can operate autonomously, but also by remote control with virtual reality or tablet, and be managed as part of a fleet. In addition, a collaboration with Google DeepMind comes into play, aimed at integrating Gemini Robotics models to accelerate the learning of new tasks, a capability that the company presents as part of its roadmap and not as a fully deployed function from day one. Images | Boston Dynamics In Xataka | If China manages to lead in humanoid robots it will not be only because of its technology: its companies know how to sell them better than anyone else.

Microsoft knows that something has gone wrong, and promises these changes

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For years, if you wanted to play on a computer, the answer was almost automatic: you needed Windows. Linux experience was limited and macOS did not offer a competitive catalog. That landscape seemed immovable until Valve decided to really bet on the game on Linux and showed that there was room to shake the board. Steam Deck It came as an experiment that many did not see coming and ended up reconfiguring expectations, to the point that more and more players are talking naturally about switching to Linux. This change of mood has put Windows under a magnifying glass that it did not have before. Windows’ historical strength in gaming was explained by something very simple: it offered the largest catalog, the most mature tools and a fluid relationship with developers. That basis is still real, but its perception has changed. The end of Windows 10 support along with the strict requirements of Windows 11has put teams that were still performing well on the ropes, unless their owners agree to run out of patches or use the extended update program. At the same time, the integration of functions that many interpret as unnecessary additions has generated some wear and tear. Microsoft tries to retain its throne in PC gaming Valve has been preparing the ground for years so that gaming on Linux stops being an experiment and becomes a viable option. Proton has allowed thousands of games designed for Windows work on SteamOS with a level of compatibility that was previously unthinkable, and the Steam Deck has served as a showcase for that progress. The recent announcement of a new Steam Machine for the show consolidates that movement, placing Valve in a position that challenges the idea that Windows is the only natural destination for PC gaming. It is not a frontal assault, but it is increasing strategic pressure. In parallel, far from presenting a laptop with an Xbox seal, Microsoft has opted for a more flexible path: supporting manufacturers that already dominate this segment. Together with Asus and AMD, he has shaped the ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally Xdevices that run Windows 11 but boot into a full-screen interface designed for controller use. This experience unifies games from different launchers and reduces distractions, bringing the console feel closer without giving up the PC nature. It’s a way to compete in portable devices without having to design and maintain new hardware of your own. Besides, Microsoft presented Several internal improvements in Windows 11 are the result of work with the ROG Xbox Ally, which today benefit a large part of the Windows PC ecosystem. They include more efficient power settings, more stable memory management on Ryzen APUs and lower CPU load on tasks that previously affected performance. Still, the company insists that there is still room to cover. “We are committed to making Windows the best place to play, and we will continue to refine the system behaviors that matter most in gaming: background load management, power and scheduling improvements, graphics stack optimizations, and updated drivers.” Several of the technical improvements announced by Microsoft have already reached the desktop. DirectX Raytracing 1.2 is available and provides tools to process complex scenes more efficiently as long as the GPU and drivers are compatible. Advanced Shader Delivery works on select titles and speeds up initial loading when precompiling shaders during installation. Work on neural rendering is advancing cautiously and is only available in preliminary mode for studies. In parallel, Windows 11 has expanded support for LE Audio, which reduces latency and improves the experience in games that depend on sound. The push for Windows on ARM has become another relevant front to expand the reach of the ecosystem. During 2025, devices enrolled in the Insider program have been able to install compatible games from the Xbox PC app, allowing many titles to be played locally. The Prism emulator has added support for AVX and AVX2 instructions, and several anti cheat vendors, such as Easy Anti Cheat and BattlEye, have added specific support for Windows on ARM. From a gamer’s perspective, Windows retains obvious advantages, such as its catalog and the guarantee that almost everything will work without additional tweaks. Even so, the experience in Linux has improved Enough so that some see a more limited system as attractive, with fewer background processes and more predictable behavior. SteamOS solves many historical obstacles, although its popularity does not reach that of Windows, which continues to concentrate around 95% of Steam users compared to Linux still close to 3%. Windows’ journey in gaming has been long and dominant, but its role is no longer automatically sustained. Microsoft’s recent decisions show that the company is aware of this and wants to correct the wear and tear with technical improvements, a clearer roadmap to the future. Even so, Valve’s push has changed expectations and introduced a competitor that did not exist before. What remains to be resolved is whether these movements will be enough for Windows to retain the preferred place that no one discussed for years. Images | Microsoft | Xataka In Xataka | We knew that Valve was betting on Linux, but it was hiding something bigger: a years-long plan to bring Steam to all devices

Opera Neon promises to be the future of the browser. It is an ambitious vision yet to mature

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I’ve been using it for a week Opera Neon and I don’t know if I’m testing the future of web browsing or participating in a psychological experiment on how much friction a human tolerates before returning to their usual browser. Probably both. Neon comes standard with everything that any veteran Opera user takes for granted: side messaging integrations, music apps in streamingthe multimedia panel… It is the reminder that, despite all the agentic experimentation, there is still an Opera underneath: practical, comfortable and designed for those who live glued to several platforms at the same time. The promise is seductive: a browser that not only answers questions, but act for you. Who browses, compares, reserves, creates. Who understands what you want to do and does it while you focus on more important things. Opera calls this “agentic AI“, and technically it is correct: Neon can take control of the browser, open tabs, fill out forms, compare products. It is AI with hands, it is Opera’s proposal for the same field as Perplexity with Comet or OpenAI with ChatGPT Atlas. The problem is that those hands are sometimes clumsy, unpredictable and dangerously overconfident. Opera Neon maintains all the classic features of Opera, such as the side panels to display messaging mini-applications or streaming music on an upper layer. In the image, Apple Music. Image: Xataka. Three brains in one body To understand Neon you have to accept that It is not an AI browser. It is a browser with three AIs living together. Chat, Do and Make. Each one with its function, its purpose, its personality. And here begins the first big problem: knowing which one to use at all times is a guessing exercise. Chat is the most familiar. A conversational chatbot that answers questions, summarizes pages, translates texts. Typical. It works well when you’re not making things up, which is about 70% of the time. I asked him to count the comments on several articles and he responded with 400 words explaining that there were none. when there were four. Do is where magic and terror live. You ask him to book a CrossFit class, find the cheapest flight to Lisbon, compare prices on headphones, unsubscribe from some newsletters. And sometimes it does. Open tabs, browse websites, fill out fields. Watching him work is hypnotic. It’s also slow, erratic, and occasionally catastrophic. In a test I asked her to add flowers to a store cart. Instead of somehow inferring my zip code or asking me about it, he directly introduced 28001: madridcentrismo to the song. While I, helpless, did click on the correct options that I was completely unaware of. There is no way to correct it while working. You can only watch, like someone who sees their autonomous car getting dangerously close to the cliff. A zip code just because, 350 km from my house. Image: Xataka. Neon spent an absurd amount of time wandering around the web, adding the bouquet to the cart, getting stuck on the shipping zip code, not feeling like anything productive was happening. Image: Xataka. Another example with Do: Image: Xataka. What he did was open Google Shopping, enter the term and not be able to click ‘Search’, apparently due to some subtle change in the website’s code. I gave it myself and Neon continued. It took a long time just to choose the order by price from lowest to highest. Finally he wrote the answer: Image: Xataka. Happy ending, although it is difficult to think of use scenarios where the use really compensates for the time and supervision it requires. If someone doesn’t know about Google Shopping, this is a good use case. If someone knows Google Shopping, they only have to do two clicks. Another example: reading some recipes Straight to the PalateI asked him to add all the ingredients necessary to make them to the Mercadona cart. Let’s go to trouble. Image: Xataka. Image: Xataka. This was one of those scenarios where there was no way I was going to complete the mission. Image: Xataka. Make is the most ambitious. Generate code, build web applications, create videos. I asked him for a memory game with Spanish vocabulary and he did it in minutes. Rough, but functional. It’s like having a mini-developer living in your browser, working in a virtual environment that disappears when you close the tab. A brilliant idea. A little polished perhaps, but brilliant. Image: Xataka. There are also the cardsa kind of templates prompts that function as mental shortcuts. You can combine them – “summarize + compare”, “decisions + follow-up” – or create your own so you don’t start from scratch every time you talk to the AI. It’s a simple but powerful idea: it makes user learning part of the system. Similar to what you propose Day with his Skills. It’s a good idea. What is not being said about Opera Neon Here comes the part that interests me the most, the one I read between the lines after a week living with this thing. Opera Neon is not really a product. It is a testing ground with product pricing. It is a public beta disguised as a premium service. And that wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it didn’t cost $20 a month. Let me be clear: I’ve seen enough technology launches to recognize when a company is testing concepts in the open field. And Neon is that. The bugs They are not occasional, they are structural, like the hallucinations. The Do agent disconnects if your computer goes to sleep. Chat responses are verbose. The Cards interface—those shortcuts prompts reusable—is full of examples with no real useful content. Cards examples interface. Image: Xataka. But there’s something more interesting going on here. Opera is making a counterintuitive bet at the worst possible time. We are in 2025: Google gives away Gemini in Chrome. Perplexity has Comet. The Browser Company (Arc’s company) has Day. Microsoft puts Copilot everywhere. And OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Atlas. … Read more

Gemini 3 promises more quality and precision than ever in its responses. The question is whether we will really notice the difference

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Google has announced the launch of Gemini 3its new artificial intelligence model. in the company They claim it is their most advanced reasoning model because it is “designed to understand depth and nuance.” Gemini 3 will also be available as standard as part of AI Mode in the renewed Google search engine (in this case and for the moment, only in the US). It is the first time that Google offers the benefits of its AI model from day one in the search engine, but it also reaches the Gemini app and the developers who work with AI Studio and Vertex AI. Behind him success of Gemini 2.5 Pro and Flashthe new version arrives in 30 new languages, including Catalan, Basque and Galicianand as we say you can start testing today in the United States… or outside of there via a VPN. Gemini 3 promises. At least in the tests Google highlights how the model’s behavior has been outstanding in various synthetic tests. Thus, Gemini 3 leads the LMArena classification with 1,501 points—the first to overcome the 1,500-point barrier. According to Google, the Gemini 3’s test results put it ahead of all its competitors in virtually all scenarios. In fact, he manages to reason “at the level of a PhD” according to the tests of Humanity’s Last Exam (exceeds 37.5% of the test without tools) and GPQA Diamond (91.9%). It also makes spectacular progress in mathematics, as demonstrated by the 23.4% on the MathArena Apex test: GPT 5.1 scores 1.0% and Claude Sonnet 4.5 1.6% on the same test, for example. The model also wants to be more direct: his answers are more “concise (…) and he prefers to offer valuable information instead of resorting to clichés and flattery. Tells you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear“. Gemini 3’s ‘Deep Think’ mode goes even further in tests: in Humanity’s Last Exam it achieves 41.0%, but it also in the demanding ARC-AGI 2 It achieves 45.1% (with code execution), which also demonstrates progress in abstract reasoning and visual understanding. Gemini 3 explains the world to you in a simple way The model has a context window of up to one million tokens, which allows it to be used, for example, to analyze huge repositories of code or text and then work on that data. Its multimodal support allows you to analyze all types of information. For example, Gemini 3 can decipher and translate handwritten recipes in different languages ​​to create a family cookbook that you can share. Or analyze your pickleball games (we assume the same thing happens in other sports) and identify areas where you can improve and generate a training plan. Or scrutinize the data from a research paper and from it generate code for an interactive guide that helps us better understand those studies. In fact, integration with Google Search is an especially important part of Gemini 3, which being “embedded” in AI Mode It has the capacity to generate interactive visual elements (widgets, calculators, simulations) in real time. At Google they want the search to be more interactive than ever, and that will mean that sometimes the answers will not be just text, but rather a small interactive webapp that allows us to better understand the answer. Programming (and agents) to power The other crucial element of the model is its capacity in the area of ​​programming. Its results in tests of this type are once again outstanding, and for example it tops the WebDev Arena leaderboard with a score of 1,487 ELO. The model now behaves much more powerfully in the visual part. It also scores 54.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.0, which evaluates a model’s ability to use tools and operate a computer through a terminal. Additionally, it far outperforms 2.5 Pro in SWE-bench Verified (76.2%), a benchmark test that measures the effectiveness of scheduling agents. These Gemini 3 programming capabilities are intended to be used in a new agent development platform called Google Antigravity. The developer experience is using a “conventional” AI integrated development environment (IDE), but your agents can have access to the editor, terminal, and browser. That means these agents can autonomously plan and execute complex software tasks and validate their own code, making it easier for human developers to review and audit that code than ever before. The real challenge of the most recent models On paper Gemini 3 is postulated as a model that can really make a difference compared to its competitors. The test results and Gemini’s own trajectory make us think that the behavior of this model will indeed be remarkable. However The question is whether we will really notice the difference. In recent months we have seen how other AI companies have launched new models, but the impact for a large majority of users has been discreet: the previous models already performed really well, and although the new ones undoubtedly provide improvements, for many consultations these improvements allow us to perceive that jump in performance. Here we see two ways for Google to effectively demonstrate the capabilities of these models. The first opportunity for Gemini 3 will likely be in the area of ​​programming, and it will be these professionals who will likely be able to get the most out of those additional capabilities. But for the rest of the users, it will be that new AI Mode and the Gemini app that will have to make us notice those features. We are intrigued by this ability to respond with small interactive elements —graphics, widgets—, and perhaps with them we will really discover this new capacity of this chatbot. In Xataka | Let’s say goodbye to Google Assistant a decade later. Google has begun to delete its code to leave only one option: Gemini

analyzes your poop and promises to take care of your health for $600

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Who in their right mind would think of putting a camera in the toilet. If the camera also costs $600, the thing sounds even more crazy. It’s Kohler’s latest idea and it makes more sense than it seems. Monitoring even the poop Smart watches and bracelets have created a whole health monitoring culture. This is what a few years ago we called the ‘I, quantified’but recording the steps was just the beginning. Today any wearable is capable of recording our keystrokes, the blood oxygen level and they also measure our sleep. Where smartwatches or smart rings do not reach, an entire category of health monitoring devices has emerged such as smart scales or Kohler’s proposal with the Dekoda camera. It is not the first in this line, a couple of years ago we already talked about sensor to detect urine withings. Dekoda: the camera that analyzes your bowel movements Kohler is one of the most recognized household products manufacturers in the United States. They recently announced the creation of a new division focused on health and their first product is Dekoda, a camera that is installed in the toilet to record the frequency and characteristics of our bowel movements. Dekoda has “advanced optical sensors and spectroscopywhich effortlessly observe how light interacts with your waste to learn to detect variations that could indicate health problems.” Kohler says that behind Dekoda there are more than 10 years of research to ensure accurate and reliable results. Dekoda comes with a mobile app in which data is transmitted (not photos, thank goodness) and helps detect health problems such as dehydration or presence of blood in the stool, which can be indicative of serious illnesses. It also offers nutritional suggestions and lifestyle changes. To ensure privacy, all content is encrypted and can be protected by fingerprint. It also comes with a remote control that is placed on the wall to scan the fingerprint and thus distinguish between users. The camera is placed on the edge of the toilet bowl (it can be placed in any toilet, it does not have to be from Kohler) and works with a rechargeable battery that we can remove to recharge it. It costs 599 dollarsbut also you must have a subscription to Kohler Health to be able to use the app, so you have to add 70 dollars per year per user or 130 dollars if there are several. Images | Kohler In Xataka | I got my hands on some “sleep headphones” in the hopes of finally falling asleep. It came out regular

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