setting

We believed that laboratories and millions were needed to build a GPU. A maker is setting one up at home

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For years we have assumed that build a GPU It was a field reserved for companies with advanced factories, engineering teams and million-dollar budgets. It wasn’t an absurd idea: just look at the complexity of any modern graphics card to understand why it seemed out of reach for a person. But what he has done Matthias Balwierzknown as Bitluni, forces us to qualify that certainty. It has not replicated a GeForce nor does it intend to compete with NVIDIA, but it does is building from home a graphics machine with thousands of RISC-V microcontrollers. The first phase brings together 8,192 of those microcontrollers, each linked directly to an RGB LED. This decision makes the montage difficult to fit into the usual categories: the design brings together in the same structure the graphic processing and the surface on which the result must appear. In technical terms, it is designed to act as both a graphics card and a screen, without depending on a separate monitor. Of course, the project remains a partial prototype, still far from the scale and capabilities planned for the complete system. A GPU made pixel by pixel That architecture was not defined from the beginning. The maker began thinking about building some type of screen, but when studying the cost and difficulty of the project he ruled out resorting to components Addressable RGBwhich would have made the whole set too expensive. The alternative was more direct: solder an LED to each microcontroller and turn each chip into a visible graphics unit on its own. The decision contained part of the budget, although it multiplied the design, assembly and programming work necessary to coordinate thousands of elements. The scale becomes clearer when we look at the complete objective. A resolution of 1920×1080 would have required more than two million microcontrollers, shooting the cost and complexity far beyond what Bitluni had set itself. The maker then lowered the ambition to 320×200 pixels, a resolution associated with video games of the DOS era, but which still requires 64,000 chips. The components installed so far represent just a first stage of a machine that would multiply its size almost eightfold if it is completed. To organize such a large amount of hardware, Bitluni divided the system into 16×32 “pixel” boards, conceived as independent modules within the set. These are distributed in a circular arrangement that reminds of Cray-1the historic supercomputer of the seventies, although the reference is mainly visual. Internal coordination is also hierarchical: each group of 32 microcontrollers is under the control of a more powerful CH32V unit, in charge of organizing the operation of that section and serving as an intermediate level within the machine. The choice of the QingKe CH570 explains part of the economic logic of the project. It is a microcontroller with a 32-bit RISC-V CPU, a limited instruction set and a frequency of up to 100 MHz. It also integrates a USB controller, a 2.4 GHz transceiver and support for Bluetooth 5.0 LE. Bitluni was able to buy each unit for about $0.13, but the advantage is diluted when multiplied by the entire planned matrix: only the chips necessary to reach 320×200 pixels would exceed $8,000. The problem grows when projecting the power supply of the complete system. It speaks of an estimate of 2,161 W, equivalent to about 655 amps at 3.3Vfor the final planned configuration. The media points out that each microcontroller consumes around 10 mA, although it does not offer a breakdown that allows us to separate the expense of the chips, LEDs and auxiliary electronics. To support such a load, Bitluni has turned to a source Corsair WS3000 and own converters capable of transforming the 12 V output into the required 3.3 V. A big part of the project is also making the infrastructure that allows everything else to work. Bitluni designed the PCBs, power circuits, interface boards and breadboards, tackling a six-layer board for the first time. The complexity of the design ended up pushing him to the limits of the manufacturing service he used. In parallel, he studied an immersion cooling solution and came to the size of the acrylic container he would have needed, although he left that option on hold for economic and environmental reasons. Programming posed another problem of scale: it was not enough to manufacture the boards, the code also had to be loaded into each microcontroller. To avoid doing it by hand, Bitluni 3D printed a small tool with three contacts and attached it to the carriage. a 3D printer. A Python script sent G-code commands to move it to the exact position of each chip and complete the process in a repeatable manner. The printer thus stopped manufacturing parts to become an automated programming machine. This machine does not compete in performance, efficiency or size with a modern graphics card, nor has it yet reached the scale that Bitluni projected. Its value lies in exposing, through separate components, tasks that a commercial solution concentrates or distributes among specialized chips and circuits: calculation, control, power, coordination and visualization. By rebuilding them with low-cost microcontrollers, the maker has turned an unusual idea into a system that can be designed, tested and expanded in stages. It is not a conventional home GPU, but an engineering experiment taken to unusual limits. Images | Bitluni In Xataka | Huawei’s He Tingbo: “This is the first time China has proposed a new principle for the chip industry.” Not everyone is convinced

Manufacturing 60 machines a year may not seem like much. In practice, those of the European ASML are setting the pace of AI

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Sixty machines a year sounds like a lot when we talk about artificial intelligence. We are used to huge numbers: data centers, billions of dollars and increasingly ambitious models. But AI also depends on things that are much more physical and difficult to scale. And that’s where ASMLa European company that manufactures lithography equipment to produce advanced chips, becomes a difficult piece to avoid. This year it will manufacture at least 60 machines. And they will be indispensable. To get an idea of ​​scale, artificial intelligence does not rely solely on better models. Just a few days ago, Reuters pointed out that Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet plan to allocate more than $600 billion in capital spending in 2026 to expand their AI infrastructure. These players need semiconductor manufacturers, who need advanced technology to produce the chips that will equip their customers’ future data centers. Here ASML appears in all its dimension. The Dutch company does not manufacture the chips that will end up in data centers, but it does manufacture the machines that allow the most advanced ones to be produced at scale. For now, because China is accelerating this raceis the only global supplier of this equipment, known as extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. This position explains why a company based in Veldhoven has become such a relevant piece for a career that is usually viewed from Silicon Valley or Taiwan, but that also has a decisive role in Europe. The European manufacturer that sets the pace for AI The striking thing is that the great jump translates into a very specific figure. The data comes to us from the last presentation of the firm’s financial results, specifically those of the first fiscal quarter of 2026. Roger Dassen, VP and CFO of ASML, pointed out that they plan to manufacture at least 60 standard EUV machines in 2026. That is 36% more than those sold in 2025. In other words: in an industry that is measured in gigantic investments, significantly increasing production means moving to dozens of machines, not hundreds or thousands. By 2027, the firm hopes to reach at least 80 units. TWINSCAN EXE:5000 Manufacturing more units is not as simple as expanding an assembly line. ASML’s most advanced lithography equipment has a size comparable to that of a medium bus and they are among the most complex devices ever created. They are huge systems, extremely precise and assembled for months in clean roomswith purified air to avoid any contamination. The reason is simple: in this process, a single dust particle can disrupt production. That’s why scaling doesn’t just depend on having more orders on the table. There is a part of this history that remains outside the ASML factories, but that weighs almost as much as its own production. Their customers also need to build clean rooms to install the machines they purchase, a task that requires specialized labor, electrical connections, technical expertise and abundant available power. It is a basic condition for these dozens of pieces of equipment to later translate into more real manufacturing capacity. In other words: the machine matters, but the place prepared to receive it and put it to work also matters. Then there’s everything that happens before one of those systems leaves the Dutch company. Their equipment is built with components from more than 5,000 suppliersso increasing the pace requires that entire network to move forward at once. If one of those links does not arrive, the whole may suffer. And talent adds another difficulty: in the south of the Netherlands, many technical profiles are already in the company or in your supply chain. That’s why Veldhoven’s signature searches for candidates at Dutch and foreign universitieswithout weakening the partners you need to grow. That is the reverse of a figure that, in isolation, may seem small. Sixty machines don’t sound like much in an industry that talks about gigantic models, data centers and huge budgets. But what we have seen is that each of these units is part of a physical, technical and human chain that is much more difficult to accelerate than it seems. This boom is precisely what has helped consolidate ASML as the European company with the highest stock market valueahead of names like LVMH either Hermes. AI is also at play here on the Old Continent. Images | ASML (1, 2) In Xataka | ASML has the most in-demand and advanced lithography machines in the world. And now also, his Lego set

Fed up with paying almost 8 euros for a Guinness, someone thought of setting up an index to find cheap beer

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How delicious is that little beer that you drink right after leaving work or after a paddle tennis game and how angry it is when you find out that they have raised the price. Matt Cortland He paid €7.80 for a pint of Guinness in Dublin in March 2026 and didn’t like it one bit (the price, not the beer). So instead of criticizing the waiter or posting a review on Google complaining like some people do, he adopted another strategy that was slightly more laborious but much more effective (judging by its results): a very complete price index where he would know where to drink the best and at what price. Because revenge, like beer, is served cold. The project. Is called Guinndex and is independent of the very famous Irish beer brand. You go to the website, enter a pub, a city, a county or a postcode in the box and it returns pubs and the cost of a pint, as well as useful information such as its location or its score. Or you zoom in on the map to see with a traffic light map which taverns look cheaper than others. A good way to save if you travel to Ireland and fancy a pint of Guinness. In fact, it has very diverse rankings ranging from how long it takes to earn a pint (depending on salary) to pubs named after animals or the best pub names (praise be the “Hairy Lemon”). Today it has almost 6,500 registered pubs in the 32 counties of the country and almost 1,300 prices verified and rising thanks to anonymous contributions from users. The price index for Dublin. Guinndex Why is it important. Because the Irish Central Statistics Office stopped tracking the price of a pint since 2011, leaving a data gap of more than a decade in a country where Guinness is much more than a beer. And although Guinness is almost a religion in Ireland, it is the same everywhere: no one knows for sure if they are overcharging you compared to the standard price or how much extra. The Guinndex fills that gap with real, verified data, not estimates. Furthermore, it does so publicly and for free, so that it allows obtaining an objective reference so that consumers have information and can put pressure on prices. It’s the market, friend. On the other hand, and leaving aside the anecdote of finding where to drink cheaper, what it shows is relevant: that the cost of carrying out a complex idea has plummeted and streamlined so much that a single dev is capable of setting up a project of this magnitude in just 48 hours when before it took weeks of work, a certain budget and a team. Context. Matt Cortland likes AI, data and Guinness, as he himself admits on the project website. He is an American engineer based in London with strong ties to Ireland: his partner is irishlived and trained there with the George Mitchell scholarship and course the Creative Digital Media master’s degree from TU Dublin. He is not just a tourist they are trying to scam. The project came at a critical time: Diageo, the company that owns Guinness, had applied several price rises in a row and some pubs had taken the opportunity to inflate margins. If you’re not careful, you can pay up to €11 for a pint, although the average price in Dublin is €6.94 and €6.06 nationwide. How has he done it. With an AI agent named Rachel who looked human, understood Irish humor, and had a Northern Irish accent (after several tests, she concluded that this worked best), as its author tells. The task was simple and quick: call, ask the price of a pint of Guinness, say thank you and hang up. Few people discovered that it was a chatbot and there were all kinds of responses, even waiters who offered to buy him a round. During the St. Patrick’s weekend he called 3,000 pubs, answered more than 2,000 calls and more than a thousand pubs provided a price: he already had the Guinndex base. The technical stack was jack, knight and king: the Google Maps API, ElevenLabs for the voice and agent logic, Twilio for making the phone calls, and Claude for extracting Guinness prices from the transcripts. Cortland explains What cost him the most was time, since he only invested about 200 euros. The consequences. The most immediate impact is behavioral: Cortland account that the owner of a pub lowered the price of his Guinness by 0.40 euros and then updated the information in the Guinndex himself. When there is price transparency and it is available to everyone, it is capable of changing behaviors. However, the biggest consequence is the technological moment in which we live: three APIs, 200 euros and a weekend are enough to build a project from scratch, with real utility and that is already changing prices. The bottleneck is no longer money or infrastructure: it is knowing what problem is worth solving. In Xataka | Spain can tell itself as many times as it wants that it hates Cruzcampo. The figures say a very different thing In Xataka | We humans like beer. The big question is whether we like it enough to have invented agriculture Cover | Guinndex and Christopher Zapf

Much of the world economy right now consists of setting up data centers. And there is already a game on Steam that simulates it

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Surely what you want most when you come back from work is to turn on your PC or console to play a work game. There is not an ounce of sarcasm in this phrase, since for some time now games that are about that, about working, have become popular. And I don’t mean a ‘stardew valley‘ farm management or a ‘Animal Crossing‘mortgage payment: I mean games that are, directly, a second job. There are cleanof be an IT in a company, as a worker supermarket or of construction worker. Also being in charge of a data centerclear. With all the boom in data centers that have drunk the ram market and SSDs, it is possible that you can’t build a PC new because RAM is through the roofbut you can always fulfill the fantasy of being that person who has the power to set up servers and wire everything in their hands. Is called ‘Data Center‘, and as a game to learn how data centers work and turn off your brain, it is… interesting. The game of having an after-work job setting up data centers Don’t think of this game as a construction game like ‘The Sims‘ and the like. Here you already have the space and what you should do is internal management. You must buy the frames to install the racks, servers and switches, but not crazy, but depending on the needs of the clients who hire your services. Once you have the equipment, it is time to interconnect them with the Ethernet cables that link systems within the same rack, but that must also physically go to other platforms. The easiest thing is to pass those cables through aluminum structures hanging from the ceiling, and once you think you have everything ready, it’s time to turn it on. This is when your customers’ traffic is represented by light balls that travel along the cables. Those little balls have their reason because as things progress, Your clients will ask for more and more bandwidthand you will have to start managing and prioritizing. Equipment also breaks, so you will have to go to the PC to order spare parts or upgrades to have greater computing capacity. The idea is to create the perfect system with the best possible data flow, without bottlenecks and without wasting resources, carefully scaling to offer each client what they need and not oversizing. Those little balls represent data traffic. Each color is a customer It is, in short, a work game that can be repetitive, but that is why it works so well. In this type of titles you do not have to solve puzzles, You don’t have to be skillful with the controls or think too much. They are ideal for turning off the brain while we do a repetitive task and simply focus on what we have to do and what clients ask of us. It sounds like the most boring thing in the world, that second job that I mentioned at the beginning of the article, but they are perfect games to turn off the brain while we have a podcast in the background or something like that. In the comments of this particular ‘Data Center’, players highlight the “teaching” aspect and, despite the limitations of some systems, how realistic it feels. The store from which we must order the components Now, it is not a simulator. In the comments, players who claim to work in data centers point out that, although it is curious and represents some things very well, there are others that do not fit reality and technical options are missing such as VLAN systems or managing something as basic as power cabling. The best thing is that it costs nine euros and, if you don’t click on the first two, you can request a refund on Steam very easily. In the end, it is not a game for everyone. No game is, really.but ‘Data Center’ is one more of that much talked about wave of work games that is appearing recently. Because managing a data center may not be your thing, but for example, restore retro games or manage the latest video store of the city before Amazon eats it. Images | ‘Data Center’ on Steam In Xataka | It seemed like a game of imitating movements. It was actually diagnosing autism better than many clinical tests

LIDL has joined the latest trend to make lots of money: setting up your own low-cost operator

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Lidl is at the doors of launch a low-cost mobile phone serviceeven more competition for a Spanish MVNO market that is beginning to become saturated and in which it seems practically impossible to surpass the current king: Digi. The LIDL plan. Grupo Schwarz, owner of LIDL, has acquired 9.9% of the communications provider 1Global, currently operating in Spain under the Orange network. The plan is to create a virtual mobile operator (OMV) to offer low-cost telephone services, wanting to expand the proposal throughout Spain and 30 more countries. The how. The service will be offered through LIDL’s nerve center for the smartphone: LIDL Plus. The application will allow the contracting and management of the service, ensuring the executive of the hypermarket chain that it will offer “simple connectivity.” LIDL has an important advantage over the rest of its rivals: physical presence throughout the entire Spanish territory and a potential customer in search of low prices. It is not the first in its sector: Eroski and Carrefour They were among the first in Spain to offer this service. {“videoId”:”x85jqs5″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”DIGI TV Ad: "Enjoy with DIGI the advantages of going it alone"”, “tag”:”mobile”, “duration”:”40″} The electrical phenomenon. The MVNO market is beginning to become saturated with more and more companies outside the sector. The keys? Low operating costs and high margins. The most recent example is PcComponentes, which overnight became an operator with the help of Likes Telecom, a Spanish company focused on the creation of telecommunications brands. We also have recent examples in Revolut, Klarna or N26, players in the financial sector introduced into the world of telecommunications. A simple way to diversify sources of income and build customer loyalty through applications they already use. In Xataka Digi is dropping prices to attract more and more customers in Spain. The problem is that he still doesn’t make any money. Yes, but. None of these players are fighting to win the telecommunications market, where the king is simply unbeatable. DIGI is not only the low-cost operator with the largest volume of clients in Spain: it is the only one that can face giants like Telefónica, MásOrange or Vodafone (whom to pretend to surprise in the coming months). In Xataka | Digi wants to become one of the largest teleoperators in Spain. And that is why it has gone from 4,000 to 10,000 workers. (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news LIDL has joined the latest trend to make lots of money: setting up your own low-cost operator was originally published in Xataka by Ricardo Aguilar .

They are setting up express wedding stalls at festivals

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China is going through deep birth crisis and it is being implemented all kinds of measures to reactivate it. One of the axes on which policies to increase birth rates are based is to encourage weddings, which also have plummeted as divorces rise. The desperation is such that they are setting up express Las Vegas-style wedding booths. Yes, I want to (go to a festival). It happened in the last edition of the Super Strawberry festival in Uruqmi, in Xinjiang. In addition to the typical stalls to buy drinks, food or merchandise, they also set up a temporary office to celebrate weddings on the spot. Three couples got married. They count in South China Morning Post that these offices for express weddings are part of the offensive to reverse the drop in birth rates, but they have not only appeared at festivals, they have also been installed in picturesque places and tourist attractions such as parks or lakes. Facilities. In March of last year, The Chinese government simplified the procedures for getting married with the aim of encouraging marriages and reducing associated costs. Previously, it was mandatory to complete a procedure in your hometown, but now registration can be done at your place of residence and you only need to bring your DNI. By eliminating this bureaucratic barrier, travel is avoided and everything is streamlined. The government also proposes lower the legal age to marry (currently it is 20 years for girls and 22 for boys), but at the moment this has not been implemented. The cost of getting married. A wedding in China doesn’t exactly come cheap; It is one of the reasons for the drop in the number of commitments. He caili or “bride price” is a tradition in which the groom’s family makes a transfer of money or property to the bride’s. In 2023 the national average was 69,000 yuan (about 8,700 euros, at the current exchange rate), an unaffordable figure, especially in rural areas with lower incomes. The government has carried out campaigns against ostentatious weddings and very high cailis and this seems to be getting into something more. In rejection of this tradition, more and more couples are fleeing celebrations in ostentatious halls and celebrating their weddings in cheaper places such as restaurants, some even at McDonald’s. More measurements. As we said, China is trying literally everything to encourage young people to get married and have children. Some of the measures that have been implemented are: It’s not working very well. The efforts to increase the birth rate are undeniable, but the figures are clear: They are failing. China continues to lose population for the fourth consecutive year and everything indicates that it will not be able to reverse the curve in the short term. Despite the measures, the cost of raising a child in cities is very high and there is a labor and housing crisis that especially affects youth. To all this we must add the cultural change; more and more women reject the traditional family model and they prioritize their career. Image | Đào Việt Hoàng (Unsplash) and Tom Fisk on Pexels In Xataka | In the midst of the collapse of the birth rate, China has made a radical decision: suspend foreign adoptions

Ben Affleck had been secretly setting up an AI company for filmmakers for four years. Netflix just got it

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Netflix has acquired InterPositivethe post-production AI tools company that Ben Affleck founded in 2022 and that was quietly developing tools. Its 16 employees go to work for the platform and the actor and director takes on advisory roles. The operation occurs just a week after Netflix will abandon the bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. What InterPositive is NOT. It is worth starting with what InterPositive does not do: it does not generate movies from a prompt of text. It’s not soraor anything similar. InterPositive starts from the already shot material of a series or movie (in any production, what is known as the dailiesthe raw footage that is recorded each day) and trains a specific AI model according to the characteristics of each production. This model then allows manipulate material during post-production: correct color, relight shots, add visual effects, reframe shots or redo shots that were not filmed. The company’s first model, for example, was trained to understand what Affleck calls “visual logic and editorial consistency”, respecting the real conditions of a shoot: the model solved common problems such as missing shots, details in the backgrounds that need to be corrected, incorrect lighting… All oriented towards filming techniques, not the actors’ performances. AI yes, but with nuances. At a conference in 2024, Affleck argued that AI “will eliminate the most laborious, least creative and most expensive aspects of filmmaking,” reducing barriers to entry. His stance is born from a specific concern for preserving what he calls “judgment”: the ability to make creative decisions that are only built with decades of experience. Affleck spoke to Netflix executives from InterPositive for the first time last fall, and acknowledged initially feeling “scared” at the idea of ​​computers playing a central role in production. Netflix, in favor. The acquisition fits into a strategy that Netflix has been defining with some consistency since 2024. At that time, the Argentine ‘El Eternauta’ included the first AI-generated scene in the final footagea sequence that was completed ten times faster than it would have been possible to do it with conventional effects. In ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ they used AI to digitally rejuvenate actors, and in ‘Pedro Páramo’ as well, with a total budget equivalent to what the visual effects of ‘The Irishman’ alone cost five years earlier. That timing Well. It’s very curiousand it is not clear if it means anything, that the purchase of InterPositive is announced just a week after Netflix withdrew from the bidding for the studios and streaming from Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix saved, in the words of its financial director, “2.8 billion dollars.” The acquisition of InterPositive, although certainly of much smaller dimensions (although nothing is known about figures), indicates where it can direct part of those resources: basically, its own production. Disney, on the other side. Meanwhile, one of Netflix’s biggest competitors, Disney, has signed a three-year license agreement with OpenAI which allows Sora users to create short videos with more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. One billion dollars of investment that goes in the opposite direction to what Netflix intends, which is to make its own productions cheaper. Regardless of the position of each player in this game, Hollywood experiments more and more openly with AI in all phases of production, from pre-production to visual effects. A new landscape is opening up for film production and Affleck’s company is just one of the first chapters. In Xataka | ‘Critterz’ will be much more than the first AI-animated film: welcome to the new era of machine-made cinema

Setting up guest Wi-Fi seemed like a good idea. Until the latest vulnerability has appeared: AirSnitch

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I’m the first one I have activated a guest Wi-Fi network to facilitate access to Wi-Fi connectivity for my friends and family, without compromising the security and privacy of the Wi-Fi network to which the rest of me is connected. devices in my home. The coffee shop I usually go to does it too. Separating the main network from the one used by visitors or clients seemed enough to prevent someone connected from snooping on other people’s computers, cell phones or printers. However, that model just took a major setback. A group of researchers has presented in the NDSS 2026 a attack called AirSnitch which shows that this separation can be broken even when the router has isolation between devices activated and uses modern encryption such as WPA2 or WPA3. The problem with AirSnitch is that it is not a brute force attack against these protection systems, but rather it has found an alternative path in which this protection simply does not arrive. AirSnitch is not an attack, it is an alternative AirSnitch is not an out-of-the-box malware, but rather a technique that exploits a vulnerability in the way many access points implement client isolation. This function, present in all home, business or public Wi-Fi networks, should prevent two devices connected to the same Wi-Fi from being able to communicate directly with each other. The problem, according to the study presented in it Network and Distributed System Security Symposiumis that this isolation is not part of a single standard and each manufacturer implements it in its own way. In their tests, the researchers analyzed 11 different devices, from home routers to professional equipment and alternative firmwares. They found vulnerabilities to AirSnitch techniques in all of them. In statements collected by Ars TechnicaXin’an Zhou, one of the authors of the work, stated that AirSnitch “breaks Wi-Fi encryption around the world and could have the potential to enable advanced cyberattacks. Our research physically taps the entire wire for these sophisticated attacks to work. It is truly a threat to the security of networks around the world.” How AirSnitch works The key is that, although the devices are “isolated” from each other thanks to the customer isolationshare certain internal mechanisms of the router that allow data traffic to be organized. AirSnitch takes advantage of that feature to trick the access point and make some of the information that should go to another device pass through the attacker first. In practice, this allows you to place yourself in the middle of the communication without the victim realizing it, generating what is known in cybersecurity as a Man-in-the-Middle (man in the middle), in which all the information on that device first passes through an intermediary. From there, the attacker can observe data and, in certain cases, modify it before it reaches its destination. That is, it is not about guessing the Wi-Fi password, but rather taking advantage of how the device itself router manages connections internal once someone is already connected. The researchers showed that this technique can facilitate additional attacks, such as redirecting the victim to fake pages or manipulating certain internal communications if they are not adequately protected. Isolation, which was supposed to prevent precisely this scenario, stops be an effective barrier. The main problem is that all devices connect to the same router that manages them. Why public networks are the most delicate scenario The risk is especially relevant in open or shared networksF for many people: cafes, airports, hotels or coworking spaces. In these environments, any user can legally connect through the password provided by the establishment and, if the access point is vulnerableattempt to exploit the flaw against other clients connected at that time. In one home network the impact is much more limitedbecause the attacker needs to know the password to enter first. That is, it has to be one of the guests to whom you have given the password, not someone external. Still, research shows that activating a guest network does not alone ensure that devices are completely isolated. Being a recent discovery, there is still no immediate universal solution for the end user. The fix depends largely on firmware updates by manufacturers or deeper changes in how they design their device isolation systems. Meanwhile, in enterprise environments it is recommended to segment networks more strictly, using configurations that truly separate devices into different internal environments and do not depend solely on a router function. For individuals, keeping equipment up-to-date, using strong passwords, and avoiding sensitive operations on public networks without additional protection are reasonable measures to reduce risk that continue to be in effect. Need a password to connect to a Wi-Fi network It is not a guarantee of security or privacy. In Xataka | VPN Buying Guide: Nine Services to Consider for Safer Browsing Image | Unsplash (Bernard Hermant)

Apple has been setting up a health system parallel to public health for years. The question is whether public health will do something about it.

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I haven’t worn a watch of any kind on my wrist for years. Partly for convenience, partly for not having another device to distract myself with. The paradox is that I find it more and more advisable to wear or give a smartwatch, precisely because of the leap they have made in monitoring our health in recent years. The other day, Dr. Miguel Ángel Cobos Gil, a prestigious Spanish cardiologist, told us at a press event that “the Apple Watch provides more parameters than anyone admitted to a coronary unit.” It made me think: we already have very reliable medical technology in our pockets, on our wrists and even in our ears. And now what? A parallel system to saturated healthcare Healthcare in Spain has just concluded a few days of strike in which they demand improvements in a system with problems: saturated primary care, insufficient personnel, underfinancing or territorial fragmentation are just a few. Spain is not the only one like this. Countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy or Portugal are struggling with similar situations, and if we look at Latin America or Asia the photo even it gets more complicated. Doctor Miguel Ángel Cobos Gil at an Apple Health event in Madrid. It is no coincidence that Apple has spent years setting up a whole parallel health system through its best-selling devices. You can now take a medically approved EKG with Apple Watch In a few minutes, the iPhone notifies you if you have risk of falling when analyzing how you walkand AirPods are increasingly looking more like a smart sonotone. Apple is the one that is taking the most solid and visible steps, but it is not the only one. Samsung integrates teleconsultations, a game to detect Alzheimer’sbooking diagnostic tests and ordering medications at Samsung Health —starting with Indiawhich is no coincidence—; Huawei gives you ten health parameters in a single gesture with its Watch 5; Google bets on a medical coach with AI on top of Fitbit and Pixel Watch data. Almost the entire tech sector is looking at the same place. Useful technology to help us with our health is already here. The problem is how to make all that data that our devices give us use for something in a collapsed public system. Your doctor doesn’t have time to look at the data on your watch And now we have been in this house for ten years: We have a lot of information about preventing diseases and devices that can help us do so. However, there is still no effective system to address it. Cobos Gil summed it up bluntly: “urgent care works.” When something really goes wrong, the system responds. The problem is before, in that period of time where an asymptomatic disease could be detected and treated with a change in habits or a simple medication, but where the family doctor cannot dedicate fifteen minutes to you if he does not see something serious or actionable. Hypertension doesn’t hurt. Atrial fibrillation does not warn. Apple Watch possible hypertension alert system And this is exactly where technology comes in—or should come in—. A smartwatch does not sleep, has no waiting list and does not need you to go see it: it passively monitors whenever you wear it, accumulates months of data and notifies you when it detects an anomaly. Cobos Gil mentioned something that illustrates the difference well: a conventional cardiac holter monitor must be taken for about 24 or 48 hours, and many times it does not capture anything because the arrhythmia does not appear in that time window. With three months of data from the Apple Watch, he says he’s gotten diagnostic information he otherwise wouldn’t have had, and has even “had to anticoagulate patients who were cleared by a Holter monitor.” This gap is especially relevant for the older population, especially if they live alone. Spain is aging fast and a silent heart attack, a fall, or an arrhythmia that is accelerating are situations in which the time between the event and medical attention is everything, and in which not having a family member or caregiver nearby—the child in another city, the grandchildren in another country—creates a very vulnerable situation for these people. These are situations that happen. In Applesfera we have just told the case of a lady who suffered a fall due to an epileptic attack in Torremolinos and his Apple Watch helped everything end in a scare. The striking thing about this is that hospitals already do this type of monitoring in extreme cases. When a modern pacemaker or defibrillator is implanted, the hospital monitors the patient remotely and can intervene if something goes wrong. A watch like the Watch takes that logic from the hospital to home: it allows a son in Madrid to see in real time if his mother’s heart in a town in Teruel is beating strangely, or to receive an alert if she has fallen and hasn’t gotten up. It is not medicine of the future. It is medicine of the present waiting for the system to learn to incorporate it. The limit that no one has set Tim Cook at WWDC 24 What Apple, Samsung, Huawei or Google have built so far is the beginning. Apple has been working for years on non-invasive blood glucose monitoring —without being punctured, through optical spectroscopy—and the most solid rumors suggest that could come to the Apple Watch in 2027 or 2028. Before that, I’m pretty sure we’ll see an AI-powered medical assistant built into the Health app — known internally as Mulberry Project— trained with your real clinical data. Tim Cook has been repeating for years that the Apple’s greatest contribution to humanity will be in healthcare. What it doesn’t say is exactly how far. Because the question that these devices do not answer is one that seems very important to me: Where do they set the limit for themselves, and who sets it for them from the outside? Early detection of … Read more

Mercadona and the white label had been setting the course for supermarkets in Spain for years. Until the “ultra low cost” arrived

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When we Spaniards go out shopping we value above all two factors. The first, proximity. The second, the price. Even above the quality. It is not at all surprising if we take into account that we come from a inflationary crisis and there are items of common consumption (cocoa, coffee either eggs) who have experienced a real storm in recent months. The chains know how much they are risking with each euro and have acted accordingly. For example with a bet on the white label that has been especially good to Mercadona. There is, however, another strategy that has been gradually making its way into the world. retail Spanish, one also focused on prices, but that does not rely on white label or short assortment: supermarkets “ultra low cost“. “Ultra low cost“? Exact. It sounds somewhat far-fetched (almost, almost cacophonous) but that is the label that best defines certain supermarket chains that have focused their strategy basically on product discounts. double digit. After years of inflation and with costs becoming a decisive factor When families decide where to shop, most chains try (to a greater or lesser extent) to be competitive in prices. In fact in the rankings Cheaper stores usually include brands such as Alcampo, Family Cash or Aldi. In the case of super “ultra low cost“The price is, however, more than just a front on which to compete. It represents the great differentiating factor. And it is to such an extent that it conditions the approach, the offer and the way the chain operates. In a recent article, Five Days reviewed the billing data of two relatively young firms that fit this pattern: Sqrups and Primaprix. What differentiates them? That in a sector (that of supermarkets) in which it seemed that everything had been said, with Mercadona expanding your domain and the white label gaining market sharethe “ultra” chains low cost“have found an alternative path of growth. Their strategy involves offering items from recognized brands (nothing from Hacendado, Deliplus, Auchan or similar), but with surprisingly low prices. As an example, Sqrups boasts of offering its customers “significant discounts” that move between 30 and 80%. How do they work the miracle? With your business model. More like its supply model. Unlike most supermarket chains, they supply surpluses that are left ‘off the hook’ or have no place on the shelves of companies such as Carrefour, Eroski, Mercadona or Hipercor, among others. These are surplus stocks, items that do not quite work, merchandise that has been left out of the circuit due to a change in packaging or not meeting presentation standards… In short, items in good condition that manufacturers need to liquidate and cannot (or want) to distribute through ‘conventional’ chains. Their destination ends up being Sgrups or Primaprix, where they add to a catalog marked by rotation, speed and discounts. But… How do they do it? “Large international brands usually have surplus stocks in their warehouses, left over from promotions (Christmas, summer, events…), from new launches or simply products with a much lower price in one country than in another. At Primaprix we travel throughout Europe hunting for these opportunities,” details the companywho remembers that he opened his first store in Madrid in 2015 and in just ten years he has built a network of 260. Sgrups’ explanation is similar. “We recover products that, under normal conditions, distribution throws away,” clarifies its general directorRaúl Espinosa, who boasts that thanks to its discounts the chain sells products with prices much lower (50-80%) than those on the market. The company ensures that its assortment comes from three sources: “production surpluses, image changes and quality control.” It also incorporates “short-dated” products. “In the last year we have rescued more than 26 million products, preventing them from being destroyed and giving them a second chance for consumption,” the company specifiesborn ago just over a decade and that works with food, but also drugstores, stationery and hygiene items. The big question: why? Because this formula has allowed them to connect with a part of the market and expand in a sector, that of retail Spanish, in which a small number of brands have been expanding their dominance. “Companies like Sqrups or Primaprix break the differentiation with the rest of the operators thanks to this supply model,” explains to Five Days Javier Pérez de Leza, good knowledge of the sector. “Mercadona, Lidl or Aldi have dedicated themselves to a type of discount that leaves room below, because the price trend is upward. You can be much cheaper than all of them, although with risks.” What risks? One (fundamental) is the pressure that operators in the sector can exert to reduce the surpluses that these chains feed on, although it is not the only limit that the model of companies like Primaprix faces. Relying on stocks makes it very difficult to guarantee the continuity of an ever-changing assortment. Furthermore, the fact that customers encounter different products every so often may increase their interest in visiting stores but also complicates such basic issues as logistics. What do your accounts say? That neither of the two chains are doing badly at all. Primaprix data we know them also thanks to Five Dayswhich a few days ago revealed that during the 2024 financial year the company had a turnover of 347 million euros. Maybe it’s far from billions from Mercadona, but it represents a year-on-year growth of 24%. If we look further back, the company’s sales quadrupled between 2020 and 2024, a period during which it went from managing 110 stores to 245. Now it is on its way to 300 establishments. The key: your business modelwhich is nourished by the surpluses accumulated in the warehouses of large manufacturers. Your catalog is completed with purchases you make in other countries, looking at prices, discarded items despite being completely suitable for consumption, or products that will expire soon. A bet not very different from what fashion or furniture outlets have been making for years. They are merchandise (many … Read more

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