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Carrefour is selling off a 55-inch QLED TV this weekend, ideal for small living rooms. Thus, it costs less than 250 euros

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He is approaching soccer world cup and it is one of those perfect occasions to renew the television, especially if we want to make the leap to larger diagonals compared to what we have been using. In this sense, 55 inches are a good gateway to large TVs but, still, relatively contained. Mainly, if we compare with the models larger than 65 inches that are increasingly common. And for a key reason: in those 55 inches we find very good prices. Daewoo 55DM75QV + coupon 51.89 euros The price could vary. We earn commission from these links This Daewoo Discount for a limited time at Carrefour is a good example of this: from its RRP of 399 euros it drops to 299 euros. But taking advantage of the campaign Save VAT Available in the store until June 8, we also get a coupon for 51.89 euros to redeem for other purchases, between June 11 and 24. If we take both discounts into account, we get a final price of something less than 250 euros which seem very good for brand new television. With an all-terrain Ultra HD QLED panel at 60 Hz: ideal for movies, sports, series and video games If we have a relatively small living room where televisions of 65 inches or more have no place, but we come from 50 inches or less and we want to take that little step towards larger diagonals, The 55 of this Daewoo are very balanced. A perfect television to enjoy the Soccer World Cup which is about to drop, in addition to all kinds of content through Prime Video, HBO, YouTube, Netflix, Movistar Plus or SkyShowtime, among other platforms. The latter also has a discount promotion active for a limited time very interesting. Also It is a good television to play if we settle for its 60 Hz. Although current consoles such as Xbox Series X either PS5 Pro They reach 120 FPS in some compatible games and we would not be able to take full advantage of it, the truth is that if we are not playing competitive titles, those 60 Hz are very enjoyable. For the rest, we are looking at a television with a great quality-price ratio with its current discount, with a 4K QLED panel Although it does not reach the contrast level of an OLED, it is more than acceptable for normal daily use in 2026. Even more so, due to the difference in cost between those OLEDs and QLEDs, which is considerable. All this, with the option of financing the amount without interest in up to 12 months, a very differential addition for many buyers. ⚡ IN SUMMARY: offer 55DM75QV ✅ THE BEST Its price, which is already good enough with the discount, but which improves even more with the VAT coupon that we get Your panel, balanced and all-terrain that fulfills in a multitude of scenarios: series and movies, sports and even video games ❌ THE WORST Far from the image quality of high-end TVs with OLED panels and refresh rates of 120 Hz or more One diagonal (55 inches) which can become short in a short time, once we get used to it 💡 BUY IT IF… You were just looking for a new cheap TV to watch the World Cup or any other content ⛔ DO NOT BUY IT IF… you have room for greater diagonals. In that case, going for 65 inches or more is a safe bet for the future. Some televisions of other sizes (and great prices) that may interest you The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Purchase addiction, Daewoo In Xataka | Best sound bars in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended models from 140 euros In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs

This ice cream, sorbet or slushie maker is perfect for small kitchens. And it doesn’t reach 100 euros

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I don’t know about your community, but here in Andalusia it is already terribly hot. Fighting it with water or any cold soft drink is fine, but much better with an ice cream or slushy. If you are one of those who prefers to make it at home and not have to go buy it on the street, you can have it much easier with this refrigerator that our TikTok colleagues have found on AliExpress: it remains in just 98.35 euros with the coupon ‘XATAKAES10‘. Teendow KF-2501U1 Ice Cream Maker with 8 Preset Programs, Self-Cleaning Function, Blend and Swirl Functions, Countertop Model for Home The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A refrigerator with 8 different functions and easy to clean @xataka.seleccion I’m already an adult and I can buy the refrigerator I always wanted 😭 Taking advantage of the AliExpress Summer Sale (until June 10), I found this: 🍦 Teendow Refrigerator 👉🏼 8 programs to make: ice cream, sorbets, frozen yogurt, slushies and more 📲 Super easy-to-use front panel (with drawings included 😌) ✨ Function for creamier textures 🧼 dishwasher-safe pieces 📖 includes recipe book 💸 Price: €108 👉🏼 with the code XATAKAES10 it stays at €95 💥 And be careful, because there are MANY more offers in the Summer Sale 🔗 Links in bio #Aliexpress #Bargains #Summer #Ice Cream #Offers ♬ original sound – Xataka Selección Being able to make ice cream, slushies or sorbets at home is not only convenient and healthier, but it also allows you choose the flavor (or flavors) that you most fancy at that moment. Almost certainly at some point in your childhood you have dreamed of being able to do this yourself and with a refrigerator like this one from the Tendow brand you can do it (without spending too much, too). This refrigerator, called Teendow KF-2501U1, is a fairly compact appliance that will not take up much space in the kitchen. It has 8 different functions and, also, very intuitive to use: each one has a small drawing of its usefulness. In addition, it has another different function for cleaning and its parts are dishwasher safe, which is always very useful. It comes with three different ice cream cups, which is very useful for storing our desserts. And, by the way, includes a recipe book that will help us get ideas to prepare drinks or ice creams this summer. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Aliexpress, American Heritage Chocolate In Xataka | American refrigerator or 70 cm Combi? Be careful with making mistakes when buying liters that you may not be able to use In Xataka | 1200 vs. 1400/1600 RPM in washing machines: is it worth paying extra to spin faster?

We have small and giant black holes, but the intermediate ones do not appear. Now some scientists have designed a method to search for them and they already have two candidates

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Today astrophysicists have a lot of information about black holes. They have even been photographed. However, there are only two types of black holes for which a multitude of evidence has been found: supermassive black holes, which are colossal in size, and stellar black holes, which are formed by the collapse of a star when it runs out of fuel. Supermassive ones usually have masses between 100,000 and 10,000 million solar masses. The stellar ones are much smaller, with approximately a mass equivalent to that of 3 to 100 suns. So what happens in the intermediate range? Don’t black holes of intermediate mass exist, between 100 and 100,000 solar masses? This is a question astronomers have been asking for a long time. Theoretically, they could exist, but no evidence has been detected. Now, a team of scientists from Yangtze University in China, has devised a method which could be useful to find them once and for all. Gravitational microlensing of fast radio bursts. These scientists have used a method that is based on searching for fast radio bursts that have experienced a gravitational microlensing deformation. These deformations are caused by massive objects that stand between the path of the blast and the Earth. By studying the effects of these disturbances, its mass can be calculated. For this reason, these scientists have analyzed a catalog of these bursts, looking for those that may have been distorted by gravitational microlensing and have been left with two candidates whose mass would correspond to an intermediate black hole. The best? They also fit with primordial black holes, so they could even serve to better understand dark matter. Clarifying concepts. Now let it be understood. Fast radio bursts are short bursts of radio waves, which come from far away, beyond the Milky Way. There is no consensus on its origin, but many have been detected, it even seems that there are a large number in a single day. For their part, gravitational microlensing are formed when a very massive object comes between a light source and the Earth. It is so massive that, due to the action of gravity, it doubles space-time and, with it, the path of light that reaches Earth. As a result, multiple and/or magnified images may form. The point is that fast radio bursts themselves can be altered by gravitational microlensing when a very massive object crosses their path. Gravitational microlensing Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). This is a Canadian radio telescope initially designed to map the presence of hydrogen in large fractions of the observable universe. Thanks to its large collecting area and field of vision and its bandwidth, over time it was seen that It was also very useful to detect fast radio bursts. They are very fast, but when observing so much sky at once they do not go unnoticed. For all this, the authors of the study that has just been published have analyzed the CHIME catalogwith special attention to bursts that at some point have suffered a disturbance by gravitational microlensing. Two candidates. Of all the distorted bursts they found, there were two whose size matched possible black holes of intermediate size. One had between 539 and 609 solar masses and the other between 1,544 and 2,571 solar masses. Curiously, there were no galaxies or galactic clusters around it. When black holes form through physically well-known collapse processes, they are usually in the centers of galaxies. However, when they are isolated, as is this case, what is expected is that they are primordial black holes. That is, black holes that formed in the early stages of the Big Bang, before there were even stars that could collapse. something unexpected. These scientists expected to find intermediate black holes, but they may also have found evidence of the origin of dark matter. One of the hypotheses about this mysterious matter that makes up most of the Universe is that it is partly composed of primordial black holes. The problem is that the existence of primordial black holes has not been proven. With this new study, two birds could have been killed with one stone: demonstrating that intermediate mass black holes and also primordial black holes exist, in turn helping to unravel the dark matter mystery. Without a doubt, it is a cosmic carom that is worth continuing to investigate. Image | THAT | POT In Xataka | Stephen Hawking made a prediction about black holes in 1971. A new signal has proven him overwhelmingly right

The AVE to Extremadura has taken a key step in its connection with Madrid. It’s a small step that takes us back a decade.

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They say that things in the palace go slowly. We could say the same about high speed. Not only because “high-speed” trains are taking longer than ever, but also because the construction of each new line resembles a birth that lasts decades. For example, the AVE to Extremadura. A quarter of a century has now passed since the project was approved. 25 years. And what we continue to have are connections typical of the 70s until we enter Extremadura where, coincidentally, the pace is already accelerating past Cáceres. We don’t lie. In 1970whoever took a train to Extremadura would arrive at the current Monfragüe station in 181 minutes. Today if everything goes well it will only take 20 minutes less. More than half a century after passing times collected in this guideit still takes more than three hours to get from Madrid to Plasencia. And right now it is necessary to stop at the aforementioned station and take a bus because the train no longer goes there. At least, in Extremadura they can boast since last December of having Cáceres and Badajoz connected, now, by high speed. Since the last days of the year, it is possible to cover the journey in 50 minutes. It is the result of works that, although they have taken time, have ended up being completed. A milestone that they cannot boast of in Castilla-La Mancha. And, 25 years after beginning to study where the AVE will pass on its way to Lisbon, a new step forward has been taken. One that also takes us almost ten years back. One step forward, Toledo. One step back When it was planned that an AVE would connect Madrid with Extremadura, it was decided that the work would have two large, clearly differentiated sections. One of them would be Madrid-Oropesa, the second Talayuela-Cáceres. With its obvious delaysthat second section is close to completion and its completion past Cáceres is what has allowed the arrival of high speed in that interprovincial Extremaduran section. And, as they point out in this great review of the diary Today Despite all the dates that have occurred in this quarter of a century, the end of the project could have been very advanced if the La Mancha section had been built at the same speed. However, since 2008 the various parties involved have been discussing what to do with the passage through Toledo. Or, rather, whether or not the train should pass through Toledo. That year, with the environmental impact report of the Madrid-Oropesa section already approved, the final approval was given to the informative study that contemplated a connection with the Andalusian corridor next to the Toledo town of Pantoja. The idea was to take a branch of this line towards Extremadura and thus save costs. The works, however, were not carried out. The 2008 crisis wiped out the project and it was never launched. Without machines working, the environmental report expired and that was when the Ministry of Public Works indicated that the AVE would pass through Toledo. We are already in 2017. The Government’s proposal was that, by passing through Toledo, the line would attract a greater number of travelers since the line would connect with a city that is a World Heritage Site. Of course, this meant traveling more kilometers and increasing travel time because Toledo is located further south than the first proposal. The idea was rejected by local authorities from the first moment. And the passage through Toledo It’s delicate. The Executive’s proposal has always been to take the AVE to the current station, which is just two kilometers in a straight line from the city center. But that means building a viaduct to overcome the passage of the Tagus, which has received continued rejection from local governments and the neighborhood platforms that consider that the image of the city would be damaged. Their proposal was to build a new station in a nearby industrial estate. This is how the year 2020 was reached, with an informative study in which it was proposed to subdivide the section into four parts: Toledo, Torrijos, Talavera de la Reina and Oropesa. They also showed their rejection of this project in Torrijos, which led to more bureaucracy and carrying out a complementary study in 2022. This document was presented in 2024 and had the approval of this town the following year… but in Toledo, as we have said, they still do not view the project favorably. In order to streamline the project, finally The Ministry of Transport has finally approved a new informative study that would contemplate building two branches from the Andalusian corridor. They explain in Today that if the branch goes ahead it would have its origin in Pantoja (as planned from 2008 to 2017) and that it would allow passage in both directions with trains of Iberian width and international width. However, it would be necessary to use trains capable of making this jumpsince the rest of the route to Extremadura is built on Iberian gauge. That is, right now what is being studied is the same to the conclusion that It was arrived in 2008 and that remained on the agenda until 2017. At least, as an alternative until it is decided whether or not the AVE to Extremadura passes through Toledo. And, if it happens, where is it going to do it. Photo | Gunnar Ridderström, Jaime Lillo and Falk2 In Xataka | The theory said that the entry of the AVE into Galicia would plummet aircraft prices. Practice is something else

What until recently were small incursions of spring heat have turned Europe into hell

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London at 35 degrees in the month of May. We are talking about a record that would be exceptional in the middle of summer. France (“a country where much of its territory is low, soft terrain of little relief”) dangerously close to 40 and discovering how all those cities in the valleys They become “pans like Seville or Córdoba”. Central Europe, the Alps, the former Yugoslavia seeing how the thermometers have gone completely crazy. “Literally hundreds of May records have already been beaten“and the worst thing is that no symptoms are seen weakening on the horizon. The relevant question today may be why. What is happening? “It will never cease to surprise me to see a number (…) so extreme for the time and covering such a large record area,” said González Alemán a few hours ago. And no wonder: each of the little pink dots in the image below are historical heat records for May. This week, Europe has become hell and, despite years of warnings, no one really expected it. How is it possible? The explanation is simple. A powerful subtropical anticyclone has spread over Western Europe and is generating what It is often referred to as a “heat dome”. That is, a situation in which the air on the surface is not renewed, does not move and, as a consequence, warms up little by little. The following two maps show perfectly what this “heat dome” is and where it is affecting most intensely. What do they mean? The first image shows the size and extent of the anticyclone. Right now, much of Europe is cloudless. The second shows the intensity of the phenomenon. As Jeff Berardelli explainsany red dot represents a new record for May (and we are taking the record since 1950 as a reference). This has many names… “atmospheric blocks”, quasi-resonant amplification of planetary waves either persistence of “double jet” configurations about Eurasia. But the result is the same: the problem has stopped being the heat and is starting to be that today’s climatic extremes continue for days and days. “This is perhaps the most obvious sign of the new climate that has nothing to do with that of a few decades ago”. And what can we do? That’s a great question, because these heat waves (if, as they seem, they persist) will have a very clear consequence: Europe will have to change its real estate stock from “houses designed to keep the heat out” to “houses designed to keep it out.” We are facing one of the Image | Tropical TidBits In Xataka | The Gulf Stream is dying. Someone’s idea to solve it dates back to the 1950s: closing the Bering Strait

China is launching giant buoys into the sea that are real “small” fortified data centers. Korea won’t like it

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Ocean observation is an essential activity to monitor climate change, navigation and the security of the planet, however 95% of internet data travels therethe sighting of ghost ships is the order of the day and we continue found new islands. Until now, the quintessential element for monitoring the sea has been floating sensors that everyone knows: buoys, a legacy of the analog world. In that calm calm China has invaded with its Sea Dragon (Hailong) series, a new generation of enormous buoys that mark a before and after in scale, design and functionality. Of course, they have nothing to do with that mooring that has reigned in naval engineering since the Second World War. The new Chinese buoy. The Hailong series are literally small disk-shaped fortified data stations. Although small is relative: its diameter is around six meters in diameter and as a structure it looks more like a small unmanned oil platform than conventional buoys. After completing the relevant tests at sea, it has already been integrated into the Yellow Sea observation network to continuously and real-time monitor the entire water column, according to the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When deploying the new buoy, technicians simultaneously removed an older buoy after 16 years of service. A deliberate symbolic gesture insofar as it is not a mere change of buoy: according to the Institute it is “the world’s first system with a single disc side anchor structure”, leaving behind the classic central mooring point that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II. Why is it important. The problem with the design of classic buoys is mechanical and well known: when a buoy with a central mooring rotates due to currents and wind, the cables coil and generate structural and instrumentation failures. This new lateral disc anchorage solves the root problem because it uses another geometry, thus minimizing these errors, operating with more stability. That is, the importance lies in the continuity of the data. The second reason is strategic. The Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences I had already tried other synchronized observation systems capable of covering from 10 kilometers of atmosphere to 1 kilometer of depth underwater, withstanding winds of 60 m/s and waves of up to 20 meters, powered by various energy sources (wave, solar, wind, hybrid). This new buoy transfers these capabilities to especially sensitive waters. It is, in short, a buoy designed to be operational for the long term. Context. Since the 1940s, the world standard for buoys has been defined by US Navy designs, such as the NOMAD (Navy Oceanographic Meteorological Automatic Device) type. For the time, these devices complied thanks to their simplicity and ease of deployment, although due to their physics they are vulnerable to excessive swinging. If there is serious surf, precision measurements get dirty. Over the years this standard has met precisely because it complied, its maintenance is low and other alternatives present challenges to its deployment. But China, driven by its need to control the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, has chosen to redesign the platform from scratch. In fact, China and Korea have a fishing agreement in the Yellow Sea dating back to 2001 where permanent installations are expressly prohibited. So China has fulfilled it in its own way: since then it has deployed 13 buoys, two large aquaculture cages and a maintenance platform. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) qualify this strategy of “progressive sovereignty”. How they have done it. The development is led by the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been testing real-time transmission mooring systems since 2016. The new buoy is, therefore, the result of a decade of development, not a technological leap that arrives overnight. The secret of its design is the topology: moving the anchor point from the geometric center of the disc to the side eliminates the twisting moment produced by the entanglement of cables in the classic design. Instead of a wave-riding hull, the body is designed with a narrow cross-section at the waterline and deep ballast, which noticeably reduces hydrodynamic forces. For energy management, photographs published by the South Korean navy last year show models with solar panels that, assisted by artificial intelligence for data management and instrument optimization. The result is a platform that shines for its autonomy and resilience, since it can operate continuously in adverse sea conditions without human intervention. Yes, but. From a technical and geopolitical point of view, this deployment has a double reading: China’s official description presents these buoys as tools for the study of climate change and tsunami warning, but inherently this infrastructure is dual: if it integrates sonar and can process data in real time, it can also function as a war and control tool. On the other hand, the deployment of these intelligent platforms in disputed waters has its drawback from the point of view of international maritime law since they are complex and almost permanent structures. In other words, it is like putting a pike there. In Xataka | The United States is launching giant spheres into the sea with one goal: to take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy In Xataka | A buoy from Mallorca has revealed the meteorological problem that Spain faces: the Mediterranean Sea is on fire

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

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

The day a small dispute over the Tab key ended up revealing the big difference between IBM and Microsoft

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There are companies that have lived so long that their story is no longer told only through big launches, acquisitions or business battles. It is also told in small details, in those seemingly minor scenes that, seen over time, end up explaining an era better than many official statements. Microsoft and IBM belong to that category. Their paths crossed when the personal computer It was still defining many of its rules, and some of those discussions, even the most minute ones, revealed something deeper than a technical difference. The scene has been recovered Raymond Chena veteran Microsoft engineer who has been linked to the evolution of Windows for more than three decades and who for years has gathered in The Old New Thing some of the most curious stories of the Windows and Microsoft ecosystem. Chen does not present the episode as his own experience, but as the memory of a colleague who was assigned to the IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida, during the collaboration between both companies in OS/2. OS/2 was much more than just another name lost in software history. IBM and Microsoft presented it in 1987 as an operating system designed for the IBM PS/2 line and intended to take the PC beyond the limitations of DOS, with a more modern base and ambitions typical of computing that was beginning to look further afield. The collaboration came from a joint development agreement signed in 1985when the project was not yet called OS/2. In that context, any interface decision could have more weight than it seems today, because many conventions of the modern PC were still being established. Two very similar and also very different companies The problem is that that collaboration brought together two companies at very different times in their lives. Microsoft was still a young company, very attached to software and a more direct way of working, while IBM arrived with decades of history, a huge structure and the weight of a much more established corporate culture. Chen sums it up like a clash of perceptions: from Microsoft, IBM was seen as trapped in a meaningless bureaucracy, and from IBM, Microsoft was seen as undisciplined hackers. Its own nuance is important: there was probably something right in both readings. The specific anecdote begins in Boca Raton, where a colleague of Chen’s worked assigned to the IBM offices. At some point a discussion arose about which key should be used to move from one field to another within the dialog boxes. The Microsoft engineer made a decision that is almost invisible to us today because of how assumed it is: use Tab for that function. IBM was not convinced by the choice and asked that the matter will be escalated to the person responsible from that engineer in Redmond, a reaction that already hinted at the extent to which the discrepancy went beyond the key itself. In Redmond, the petition was not understood as an issue that deserved to be raised much higher. The engineer’s manager responded with a very clear idea: if Microsoft had sent someone to Boca Raton, it was so that they could resolve decisions like that there. Translated into a more institutional tone, the message that came back to IBM was that Microsoft supported the choice of the Tab key. IBM’s reaction was just the opposite. Instead of shutting down the discussion, the company elevated her up its own chain of command to a vice president, several levels above those who were programming. IBM had not only elevated the discussion, it also wanted a response to the same hierarchical height. If its vice president was against using Tab, Microsoft had to find someone equivalent to argue the opposite. Chen’s colleague then responded with a wonderful phrase, translated here into Spanish: “Bill Gates’ mother is not interested in the Tab key“It was a pretty nice way of saying that it wasn’t worth going up the corporate elevator anymore. It wasn’t necessary to go to the heights of Microsoft to decide how to move from one field to another in a dialog box. The phrase worked, at least according to Chen’s account: apparently, after that response, the discussion ended and Tab remained the key chosen to advance between fields. The detail is funny because today almost no one stops to think about it: we simply press Tab and wait for the cursor to jump to the next available space. But there was a time when that convention was not so closed. And what we see in this story is just that: a small interface decision turned into a clash between custom, hierarchy and technical criteria. The exact date, however, does not appear in Chen’s account. We know that the episode belongs to the years of collaboration between Microsoft and IBM around OS/2, whose joint development agreement dates back to 1985 and whose Public arrival occurred in 1987. This allows us to limit the context, but not to set the day or year of the discussion by Tab. There are many decisions behind the products and services we use every day. Some are huge and visible, but others fly under the radar: a key, a gesture, an interface convention that we learn once and repeat for years without wondering where it came from. Surely many have a story behind them, although most never transcend and others would not be particularly interesting. From time to time, however, an anecdote like this appears and allows us to peek into something we almost never see: how things are handled within the companies that build the technology we use. Images | Kaatvrtg (Wikimedia Commons) | In Xataka | In 1993 Microsoft created Encarta to revolutionize knowledge. Twenty years later it would be devastated by a tsunami

The highway with the most lanes in the world is in China and has 50 lanes, except for one small detail: it is a lie

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Demographic growth, urban development and the great automobile boom crossed paths in the 20th century to give rise to some of the most spectacular roads today: from the Panamericana that has never closed to the road with the longest straight line in the world. Logic leads us to think: if there are more cars, then more lanes are needed to avoid traffic jams (spoiler: from one point on, not working). And if we talk about roads with more lanes, there is one place that takes the cake: the Interstate 10 in the United States. The point that interests us in question is in Houston, Texas: there an ordinary six-lane highway from the 60s became thanks to an astronomical widening of the widest road on the planet. It is this American highway that holds the record with 26 lanes and not a chinese highwaydespite the fame of the 50 lanes of the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao. The highway with the most lanes is in Texas. Within that highway that crosses the United States from Santa Monica in California to Jacksonville in Florida with a route of 2,460 kilometers in total length there is a specific section known colloquially as the Katy Freeway: a segment about 37 kilometers west of Houston. At its widest point, at Gessner Road, the road has 26 lanes in total: 12 main lanes (six in each direction), 8 service lanes (four in each direction) and 6 central dynamic toll lanes. This corridor is the backbone of mobility for the entire west of Houston, one of the largest cities in the United States and extremely dependent on the automobile (even for the United States): it has hardly any public transportation, little urban planning and decades of peripheral expansion. In this scenario, the I-10 is more than a highway: it is the artery of mobility and business parks, logistics centers, hospitals and universities that depend on private vehicles are concentrated around it. An unofficial record, not official. The Katy Freeway holds this record in practice, but it is not official (there is no Guinness for this) because no one has agreed on how to count the lanes. Do you only count those on the main road? There are 14. Do you add the side service lanes and the center toll lanes? You reach 26. Without a single, agreed upon criterion, Guinness cannot set a number and certify it. Brief history of its construction and expansion. The Katy Freeway was built in the 1960s and had six to eight lanes, sufficient for the mobility needs of the time. But between the 80s and 90s, Houston suffered spectacular urban growth: in 2000, traffic surpassed the 200,000 vehicles when had been designed for 120,000. In 2004, the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA) classified it as the second most serious bottleneck in the country: they estimated that drivers lost 25 million hours a year. So the Administration planned a huge road expansion: an investment of 2.8 billion dollars and a four-year project between 2004 and 2008 to incorporate dynamic toll lanes inside an interstate highway for the first time. To make room they demolished an old railway corridor. As a curiosity, in 2014 there was another small expansion to add an auxiliary lane in each direction. Travel time from Pin Oak to downtown. Source: City Observatory / data: Houston Transtar More lanes and more traffic jams. Since a picture says a thousand words, above these lines is a graph from the non-profit organization City Observatory with data from Houston’s official traffic agency. City Observatory collects Although the AHUA described in a report that this expansion was one of the great success stories of traffic engineering to alleviate traffic jams and traffic jams, this was not the case: the congestion got worse. Just two years later, they recorded that travel times on that 47-kilometer route from the outskirts to downtown Houston increased by 13 minutes in the morning rush hour and 19 minutes in the afternoon. This phenomenon has a name: induced demand. Thoroughly developed by Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner in “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities“, offers a clear conclusion: vehicle kilometers traveled increase proportionally to the available lanes and the new roads attract more drivers and more trips until the added capacity is saturated. The G4 toll, seen in Street View What happens with the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao. It is common to find references to the G4 as “the 50-lane highway” thus overtaking the Katy Freeway on the right. The reality is another story: as verified by Africa Check with Google Mapsthe G4 is in practice a four-lane highway along almost its entire length of more than 2,000 kilometers. The expansion to dozens of lanes that usually appears corresponds exclusively to the Zhuozhou toll area (can be verified with Street View), near Beijing, where the number of lanes is expanded punctually to distribute the flow to the toll booths. Just half a kilometer later, it is reduced to four again. In 2015 there was a terrible traffic jam during the week of China’s National Day at that point that caused kilometer-long queues and the spread of that supposed “50-lane highway” when in reality it is the toll infrastructure of an ordinary four-lane road. In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic In Xataka | The longest road in the world has been incomplete for 50 years: the 106 kilometers of jungle that no country has been able to pave

When they told us all the advantages of intermittent fasting, they forgot one small detail: that it could make us bald.

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For years we have been sold that intermittent fasting It was the strategy of the future to lose weight and improve our metabolic health. It is logical: it was something easy to implement, reasonable and very striking. Had everything necessary to become a fashion. And so it was. It is now, as the first long-term studies come to an end, that we begin to really understand its pros and cons. The most striking, of course, is the one that has to do with hair. What exactly is intermittent fasting? In general terms, we call ‘intermittent fasting’ a diet that alternates periods without food restrictions with brief periods of fasting. ‘Fasting’, here, is a deliberately elastic term: it can mean eating absolutely nothing or significantly reducing the number of calories consumed. The idea behind it sounds good.. When we undergo prolonged calorie restriction, the body goes into “savings mode” and that causes weight loss to slow down (or, at least, slow down). Intermittent fasting would attempt to trick the body into not adapting to the new calorie restriction and therefore continuing to “spend” at a normal rate. And does it work? That’s the bad news. “Research does not consistently show that intermittent fasting is superior to continuous low-calorie diets” when it comes to weight loss, the study tells us. more complete analysis on the subject after reviewing almost fifty studies. The clinical trials that have been carried out Subsequently, they only insist on the same thing: in general terms, the results are identical to those with the rest of the normal diets. Both in the dropout rate and in the amount of weight achieved or the improvement in health markers. The choice of another method, ultimately, has more to do with individual philias and phobias than with any type of extra scientific evidence. After all, everyone has a peculiar relationship with food and, consequently, there are some strategies that ‘fit’ us better than others. In other words, there are people who use it. Yes and the truth is that nothing happens. Little by little, researchers are discovering good things (can help intestinal cells regenerate) and bad things (could promote the formation of precancerous polyps). So, little by little, we are better understanding what it does, what it stops doing and what mechanisms are behind intermittent fasting. That’s when the surprises begin. Because, for example, a clinical trial carried out with mice has discovered that intermittent fasting slows hair growth. Researchers at Westlake University (in Zhejiang, China) took about 50 mice, shaved them and divided them into three groups with dietary restrictions (fed every 8, 16 or 48 hours) and one without restrictions which is the control group. After a month, the mice that could eat without problem had recovered their hair. Those who fasted, on the other hand, only partially recovered after 96 days. As? Because? What is happening here? The first thing is to make it clear that the researchers “They don’t want to scare people away from intermittent fasting.“; but rather highlight “the importance of taking into account that it could have some unwanted effects.” Taking this into account (and that the study is in mice), the answer is both simple and full of uncertainties: to begin with, hair growth is a process that requires constant and balanced nutrition. But researchers believe the problem could go further: It is possible that “the body uses fat reserves instead of glucose and this could trigger the release of chemicals that damage hair cells.” However (and this is important) the research is in a very seminal state and there is still much to investigate. After all, there is no better occasion than this: the occasion they paint her bald. Image | Seika In Xataka | The great promise of science to end baldness is not a transplant or a medicine: it is a vaccine A version of this topic was originally published in February 2025

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