wanted

the ice cream maker that my seven-year-old self always wanted to have at home

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“Haaaaaaaaaa make ice cream, in the Famoplay refrigerator, soooo delicious, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.” I have few memories of my childhood (unfortunately), but I remember that ad from the year 2001 as if it had been broadcast during the World Cup break a few days ago. I remember that seven-year-old Jose glued to the black tube Sony in his parents’ living room, thinking, greedily, about how cool it would be to have his own refrigerator at home. It never happened. Today, 25 years later, the 32-year-old Jose, who has gray hair and is getting married in a few months, has been able to try out a refrigerator. One that, surprise, leaves the Famoplay refrigerator at the height of the bitumen. Because the Ninja CREAMi Scoop & Swirl It has little of a toy. It is one of those appliances that no one needs, that most will only use a few months a year (an ice cream in December always fits in, I said), that is a whim like the top of a pine tree, but that is a true marvel. Today, seven-year-old Jose smiles. ✅ Buy them if… You are patient enough to wait a day to eat the ice cream. You have little ones and you are looking for a culinary activity to do together. You have space at home and 350 euros that you don’t need. ❌ Don’t buy it if… You want to make ice cream on the spot and from scratch. You have a small kitchen or limited space. You want a silent device. The essentials in 30 seconds The Ninja CREAMi Scoop & Swirl is like the Ninja CREAMi, but with a dispensing system similar to what you would find in a frozen yogurt store. In addition, it has more programs designed for soft ice cream recipes. The idea and operation, however, are identical: you make the recipe, pour it into a container, freeze it and process it in the machine. In a normal Ninja Creami you eat the ice cream from the tub and in the Scoop and Swirl you have more options. The grace of the model in question is the lever. If you make soft ice cream or frozen yogurt, you can put the tub in an extruder that, by pulling the lever down, allows you to extract it through a nozzle and pour the product into a cone or tub. The machine works really scary, so much so that it is complicated, if not impossible, take issue. The only “but” that can be said is that it is large (although not heavy) and greedily noisy. Otherwise, the performance is exceptional and has lived up to each and every one of the recipes I have made these weeks. Ninja CREAMi Scoop & Swirl Ice cream maker with 2 tubs and 13 functions prepares ice cream, soft serve, gelato, smoothies and more, and has the option to add extras, stone/gold, NC701EUSTGD The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Our experience with the Ninja CREAMi Scoop & Swirl Image | Xataka How it works. Unlike ice cream makers, which cool and churn at the same time, the Ninja Creami processes solid blocks already prepared in a tub. That’s why it is “small”, because it doesn’t need a compressor. It has a blade called Creamerizer that, roughly speaking, moves downwards and “scrapes” and “combs” the frozen product. The technique is similar to the one followed to make slushies, except that by varying the rotation speed, depth and frequency of descent (hence the different modes) different textures can be achieved. It is also the reason why it makes noise, a lot of noise, not suitable for having an ice cream at nap time. In this video you can hear the noise it makes. Shall we make ice cream? That is the question that must be asked before anything else. Understanding the machine as a magical system that makes ice cream is a mistake. It requires some planning and patience, as the tubs need to be frozen for at least a day. It’s not so much “I’m going to eat ice cream,” but rather “I’m going to make the ice cream I want to eat tomorrow.” In the photos you are seeing a tub of açaí that I prepared the day before. You need another machine. A mixer, specifically. Although it may seem like it, the Ninja Creami is not a mixer. Doesn’t beat. Mixes hard ingredients into already processed preparations, but does not beat. Ideally, you should make the recipes in a blender and then pour them into the container. A mini negative point is that the tubs are small, 480 ml each, so if you make ice cream for four it is better to prepare two tubs and be cautious. The recipes. The machine includes a little book with some recipes of different types (it is not in Spanish, as a note) to try all the modes, and TikTok is full of ideas. In any case, in the long run I have ended up using only two modes: ice cream for ice cream and frozen yogurt for my açaí preparations. As for the recipes, you can get as exquisite as you want. It will depend on how deep your pantry is and how much you want to buy products that you are going to use sporadically. If you don’t want to complicate your life, take note: 100 ml of whipping cream (minimum 35% MG), 200 ml of whole milk, 70 grams of powdered sugar, two tablespoons full of pure cocoa powder and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. There you have a super simple chocolate ice cream. If you don’t like chocolate, replace it with two tablespoons of vanilla extract and you will have vanilla ice cream. Homemade açaí preparation | Image: Xataka How do the ice creams come out? In short, and assuming you don’t mess up the recipe, they come out spectacular. The texture and flavor are brutal. I’m not … Read more

OpenAI wanted to simplify its AI products. You’ve ended up with a salad of ChatGPT, Atlas and Codex

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If you have become accustomed to opening the application ChatGPT and always work from the same place, when you update you may find yourself with a quite different experience. OpenAI is reorganizing its products and, with them, the routines of those who had already turned their solutions into tools for daily use. The move promises to concentrate functions, but it also forces us to understand again which application should be opened, which environment corresponds to each task, and which parts of the previous flow continue to work the same. Three main pieces. The desktop application that we knew is now called ChatGPT Classic, while a new ChatGPT application brings together Chat, Work and Codex in the same environment. At the same time, Atlas enters its countdown: the browser will remain available for a few weeks, but OpenAI has set its withdrawal for August 9, 2026. The company thus concentrates more capabilities under a single brand, although during the transition names, applications and functions that are not obvious at first glance will coexist. They are not three versions of the same ChatGPT. Chat continues to be the space to talk, write, search for information, analyze files or resolve specific queries. Work is designed for longer, multi-stage tasks, such as researching a topic, cross-referencing documents, and preparing reports or presentations. Codex keeps the focus on software development and can work with code, repositories, terminals and other technical tools. All three share an application, but each one responds to a different way of working. The new desktop experience. The changes land on both macOS and Windows. Chat access appears in the left panel next to Work and Codex. When selected, the conversation opens within the general environment, although it can be separated into another window. OpenAI thus retains the most recognizable feature of ChatGPT, but makes it a part of a broader product, with a different organization for those who used the previous application. Atlas, in retreat. OpenAI is moving some of its capabilities to the new app’s built-in browser and to a extension for chrome. The architecture also includes a remote browser from which agents can complete tasks. Anyone who used Atlas as their regular browser will have to prepare for the move: the bookmarks they want to keep can be exported to Chrome, while cookies and passwords can be moved to the new application. Open tabs and browsing history are not transferred automatically. There are alternatives outside. Google is taking Gemini to Chrome itself to understand the open page, summarize content, compare information between multiple tabs, and, in supported accounts, complete multi-step actions. The deployment continues to be limited by region and Spain is not currently among the supported territories. Comet by Perplexitymaintains the browser-agnostic formula and is available on Mac, Windows, Android, iPhone and iPad. Perplexity Pro users can also choose between models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. The idea behind the changes. OpenAI wants ChatGPT to stop being just a chatbot and become the gateway to practically its entire ecosystem. Instead of maintaining separate apps for chatting, scheduling, or browsing, concentrate those functions under one brand. The commitment is reminiscent of the evolution of other large technological platforms, which over time have absorbed previously separate tools to reduce fragmentation and turn a single application into the center of the experience. Background. OpenAI wanted to reduce the complexity of the selector with the arrival of GPT-5but encountered users who did not see the models as interchangeable parts. Some depended on GPT-4o for specific jobs; others preferred his creative abilities and his way of conversing. The company backtracked and offered it again to paying users, before permanently removing it from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026. Perhaps in a few months this transition will be easier than it seems today. But the change brings to mind a well-known idea in software design: We don’t just learn to use a tool, we also build habits around it. When these habits are changed suddenly, the adaptation period becomes as much a part of the experience as the new functions. OpenAI’s challenge will be to make the integration easier for the user than the collection of products it aims to replace. Images | OpenAi In Xataka | The new Grok 4.5 and Muse Spark 1.1 have a groundbreaking bet: to make 90% of their rivals at 20% of their price

“Microsoft built the concept of office work because they wanted to sell more software”

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For many, the office work and spending eight hours a day in front of a screen is little less than a unnatural torture for the human being. In fact, this type of “knowledge work” is a relatively recent inventionwhich has been evolving as an adaptation of technology to the world of work. Aravind SrinivasCEO of Perplexity has gone a little further by ensuring that office work is an invention by Bill Gates to carry out his plan to bring a PC to every desk. Srinivas developed his hypothesis during his interview at the Joe Rogan Podcast and even left the presenter confused. “Microsoft built the concept of office work because they wanted to sell more software.” Gates’ dream Srinivas links the creation of office jobs directly to the Microsoft founder’s historical obsession with putting a computer in every house and on every desk. “That idea of ​​putting a PC on every desk and making you glued to it was Bill Gates’ vision,” explained the Perplexity CEO. It’s no secret. Gates himself has repeated that same idea for decades: he wanted a computer in every house and on every desk. In fact, his vision of the future of computers was published in the specialized press of the time even before Microsoft sold its first BASIC. Rogan, in his direct style, summed up the merit of Gates’ plan with a powerful phrase: “Wow, genius. What an achievement, because they certainly nailed it.” The truth is that it is difficult to contradict him. Few business strategies have changed the daily routine of billions of people as much as the arrival of computers and office automation in the world of work. A masterstroke from Microsoft Srinivas’s thesis is that the 9 to 5 job in front of a screen was not a natural evolution of employment, but a Microsoft business plan so that people used computers all day. The more hours and more people worked in front of a screen, the more software licenses were sold. According to the manager, the office routine was designed to create a daily dependence on Word and Excel, starting in schools, so that companies would then pay for these licenses. The juiciest part of the interview is the contrast between the two founders. According to Srinivas, Microsoft’s goal was never design. “It was not about making computing beautiful, as Steve Jobs conceived it,” he said verbatim, marking the difference with Apple. Jobs was pursuing something else: machines almost obsessive in their aesthetic care, which he himself defined as ‘insanely great‘. Microsoft, on the other hand, sold hardware to put software on top of. The more time you spent in front of the screen, the more licenses you needed. Microsoft’s business was not about creating a beautiful product, it was about generating dependency of your tools to sell licenses. Microsoft invented Office, not the office Despite Srinivas’ shocking statements, Bill Gates did not invent the eight-hour day nor office work. Its history comes from long before, from workers’ struggles of the 19th century and laws like Fair Labor Standards 1938 in the United States. What is true is that, as Rogan pointed out, “this type of lifestyle is something very recent that we have come to accept as normal.” The scientific evidence testifies that, with the arrival of computers and technology, the productivity at work skyrocketed. That Microsoft won that game by contributing to the increase in that productivity It is undeniable. Word, Excel or PowerPoint have been training entire generations since school. When these students arrive at their first job, they already know how to use those tools and companies pay for the license without thinking twice. In Xataka | Companies have returned to the office to improve productivity: a McKinsey study is not so clear Image | Unsplash (Jan Baborak), Flickr (European Parliament), Xataka

Microsoft bet 80 billion that you would play hundreds of titles. It failed because you just wanted to play the same old game.

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I have dozens of games in my library. Do you know how many I play? to two: from time to time I play a FIFA (I’ll always continue to call it that, I’m afraid) and if I get around to it I’ll hit the old ‘Battlefield 1’ that still has me conquered. In recent years I have enjoyed ‘Ghost of Tushima’, ‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’ or ‘Sifu’, for example, but while I was spending hours on those half a dozen titles, many others that I have in my library are simply collecting dust. Surely many of you play many more games and invest much more time in this, and Microsoft was surely thinking of you when it configured its future strategy. Xbox’s ambition was great until it wasn’t The idea in 2020 was clear, and those responsible for Microsoft said that There were 2.8 billion gamers in the world and they wanted to conquer them all. As? Well, with two great projects: Spend a million in buying video game development studios to constantly grow the catalog, and, of course, Create the ‘Netflix of video games’ with Xbox Game Pass Both ideas seemed to make a lot of sense and many gamers, especially those of us who were from Xbox, felt excited by that ambition. Xbox Game Pass seemed to be really exceptional for gamers and a nightmare for Sony, and although the operation to buy Activision Blizzard and franchises like ‘Call of Duty’ It was exceptionally expensive.the play again seemed like a fantastic bet for players of all types. But lo and behold, it wasn’t. These days we have known that Microsoft has spent close to $80 billion on agreements that would give it access to titles such as the aforementioned ‘Call of Duty’ or ‘Skyrim’, so that these video games could be available from day 1 or almost from the first moment on Xbox Game Pass. They wanted to create a catalog that would allow gamers to play hundreds of titles, including the most recent “triple A” titles, as part of the subscription to that service. They were wrong. And we also thought that the idea made sense. less is more The truth is that the strategy has not worked out well for them. The company has announced that will lay off 3,200 employees in its Xbox division20% of its staff, and will also allow five development studios to leave the company to follow their own path again. Maybe the answer wasn’t having more games. Steam already gave a strong clue at the beginning of 2025 when it pointed out that its platform It had become a video game dump.: Of 19,000 titles in 2024, almost no one played 80% of them. As in many other areas, the long tail theory prevails: interest is concentrated in a handful of contents that, on their own merits (perhaps seasoned with some luck) become absolute successes. The reality for the vast majority of gamers is the same: there are too many games on the market and people simply don’t have time to play all of them. Let’s be handsome or uglyWe insist, there is no time for so many video games. My colleague Jose García wrote in 2021 his particular reflection on how many we have become new digital Diogenes When it comes to video games: we get countless new games (most of them free) on Epic Games, Steam or GOG, but we have them collecting virtual dust in our library because we will never play many of them. My situation was also reflected in another text by Isra Fernández: Being a gamer after having children is complicated. The Netflix of video games was a utopia The picture that this situation paints for us is one that we intuited and made sense, but that we deceived ourselves by rejecting. Creating the Netflix of video games was impossible because video games are radically different to series or movies. While one consumes series or movies once and abandons them probably forever, gamers return to the video games we like again and again. We don’t spend an hour or two on them, but dozens and even hundreds of hours both in solo games and in games against other players on the internet. The way of consuming both content is precisely what destroys the illusion that a Netflix of video games makes sense. Xbox Game Pass offers us hundreds of titles so we can try them (and buy them) if we want, but we rarely do. I myself enjoyed Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for three years, and although I tried around twenty titles during that time, I always ended up returning to my classics. The options were wonderful, but I just didn’t have time for them. because when I wanted to play, I wanted to go back to my FIFA or my ‘Battlefield 1’. Microsoft itself already accused the problem when it gave us the worst news two years ago by raising the price of Xbox Game Pass. That was not enough, because a few months later he uploaded it again. The service was becoming more exclusive than ever, and it was doing so for one simple reason: they weren’t making enough money with it. But there is another problem that It is not just about consuming, but about producing. The “Netflix rhythm” is also unviable: there four scriptwriters start writing and in six months the platform releases a series that people devour in a weekend. In video games things are different, with increasingly longer and obscenely expensive developments. The famous availability of games available on “day 1” does not help either. That AAA video games worth 70 or 80 euros are available for free to subscribers was wonderful for us, but a shot in the foot for the company’s accounts. Building loyalty was important, but that was killing income for developments like these in which a lot of time and money is invested. The conclusion is clear in retrospect: Microsoft’s strategy was fantastic for … Read more

Don Benito and Villanueva wanted to show Spain the advantages of merging town councils. They have ended up doing the opposite

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He February 20, 2022 It promised to be a historic day in Extremadura. In Spain, in general. After months of debate, arguments and growing media interest, that Sunday the residents of Don Benito and Villanueva (Badajoz) cast the ballot to decide something crucial for the future of both municipalities: whether they would merge into one. The ‘yes’ vote won, although with such a narrow margin and, above all, such a low level of participation that the union did not come together. Four years later, just jump into the air. February 20, 2022. To understand what just happened in Extremadura you have to go back at least four years, to February 20, 2022when the residents of Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena held a referendum to decide whether to unite into a single town. Both town halls are located in Badajoz, they are separated by a few kilometers almost completely urbanized and share services like a hospital complex. Furthermore, in 2022 both were governed by PSOE mayors and they were in favor of their respective consistories embracing each other as one. A muted ‘yes’. The referendum backed the merger, which for a time seemed to clear the future of ‘Vegas-Altas’, the name under which he wanted to be baptized the new village. The problem is that that support was not strong enough to close the debate. To begin with, participation in the 2022 vote was modest for a decision of such significance: in Villanueva (25,873 neighbors) 58.94% of the census participated; in Don Benito (37,310) 50.42%. In the first location, 90.49% of the votes supported the alliance; but in Don Benito only 66.27% did so. It may seem like a high percentage, but the town councils had agreed that to move forward the support had to be at least 66%. That is to say, in Don Benito the procedure was passed by a few votes. As if that were not enough, there is another fundamental factor: the referendum was actually a popular consultation with advisory naturenon-binding. The merger was never ratified in a plenary session nor did the Board approve any constitutive decree. Only a protocol was signed in 2023 that remained a dead letter. Buried and buried well. That was almost five years ago. If the failed merger between Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena is news again Now it is because, after more than four years without real progress, the first town (the most populated) has decided to definitively bury the union. Although the project has been stalled for some time, the Dombeniense Government, now led by the PP and Always Don Benitohas definitively shelved the idea. On Monday the municipal plenary session unanimously approved a motion declaring its definitive stoppage. What’s more, for “reasons of transparency, legal certainty and political clarity”, the Don Benito City Council has decided Formally communicate your decision to all the parties involved: the Ministry, the Government of Extremadura, the Provincial Council of Badajoz and of course the Villanueva City Council. Their approach is simple: they want to continue “collaborating” with their neighbor, but without ‘going through the altar’, limiting their agreements to the Comprehensive Services Association that already exists. “It’s not the time”. Don Benito’s decision is not important just because of what he says. Equally or even more relevant is who says it. The motion has passed with the unanimity of the plenarywhich means that all groups are in favor of putting it in the box. Including the PSOE, the party that promoted it in 2022. Each party (PP, Siempre Don Benito and PSOE) puts forward its own arguments and places emphasis on one issue or another, but the reading seems clear: the merger has it very complicated even if there is a change of government in 2027. “This is not the time to talk about the merger now,” assume in the PSOE, which advocates “recovering the economy and exciting the neighbors again.” Crossover of arguments. The case of Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena is interesting beyond the province of Badajoz or Extremadura because it shows how difficult it is (on a political and social level) to unite two town councils. And in this case the neighbors had a good handful of arguments in favor. Beyond the economic and service cohesion that already exists, in 2021 the University of Extremadura published a report which concluded that the new urban area would be the second economic center of Badajoz and the first at the regional level in agriculture and livestock. According to their calculations, ‘marriage’ would increase household income by 2.75% and employment by 5%. Together they would add up today to a population of around 64,000 registeredmore than Merida. Opponents of the merger they put the accent at another point. They argue that the project is nothing more than “the result of a political decision driven in haste, without the necessary social consensus and without rigorous technical planning.” In fact, they regret that in February 2022, “the legal complexity” of the link was not clearly explained to the neighbors, nor were its “risks” and “real costs.” Broadening the focus. Except for a very strange surprise, everything indicates that the dream of Vegas Altas It will remain just that: a dream. In Spain, however, there are other examples of local mergers that have gone ahead. Two of the most recent are those of Oza dos Ríos-Cesuras and Cerdedo-Cotobadeboth in Galicia. The first It was forged in 2013setting a milestone that has not been experienced since 1981, and the second in 2016. Although in Galicia the processes advanced more agilely than in Extremadura, they have not been free of challenges. In 2022 The Country still warned of the challenges that Oza Cesuras had ahead of him a decade after his marriage, with unfulfilled investments and timid changes. In Galicia there has continued to be talk about some other unionalthough without landing them. Why does it cost so much? The million dollar question. In Spain there are almost 1,400 municipalities … Read more

Some millionaires wanted to build a city in the middle of a desert that did not convince anyone. They have had another idea: a shipyard

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Residents of Solano County, northwest of the San Francisco Bay Area, realized that someone had been secretly shopping a large amount of farmland. In fact, even the army He asked who had been purchasing all the land around one of his military bases located in that county. After much investigation, it was learned that behind these purchases there was a group of Silicon Valley billionaires with a plan as utopian as it is controversial: build an entire city from scratch, in the middle of dry fields. A secret land purchase. It all started in 2018, when a company called Flannery Associates was acquiringlittle by little, agricultural plots throughout the county. The owners received figures well above the market value, but no one knew who was behind the purchase. The county itself detected that a single company was purchasing large amounts of land and asked for an explanation. It wasn’t until 2023 when it came to light that Flannery was actually the real estate arm of California Foreverand that investors had been secretly buying land in Solano since 2018, until finally announcing their true purpose: to build there a new city. By then they already had some 24,281 hectares and between 800 and 900 million dollars invested. Who puts the money. The name that shows the face is Jan Srameka former Goldman Sachs trader of Czech origin. But behind the project there are Silicon Valley investors like Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell JobsLinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, as well as Michael Moritz, former partner at Sequoia Capital. His initial idea was to build a walkable city in the style of New York’s West Village, designed to attract high-net-worth employees driven by housing shortage in Silicon Valley. The plan stood on paper, but I needed something to only county voters of Solano could grant: change the law Solano County’s “Orderly Growth Initiative” of 1984, known as Measure A, which protects agricultural soil. Without that permission from the citizens there was no city possible. Water, the great obstacle. That’s where the problems started. Solano It is not an area with water leftover, and the neighbors immediately saw the risk of shortage to build a new city and increase consumption. Congressman John Garamendi, one of the most critical voices of the project, assured that “From the beginning, I have maintained that the proposed project was just a pipe dream, not a real plan. Accelerating the process without a comprehensive environmental and community review would have been disastrous for the current residents of Solano County”, criticizing that the project did not take into account that it was a site without water, without sanitation and without roads. The company tried to promote a campaign to win the vote of the citizens in 2024, which became one of the most expensive in the history of the county, and even then it was not enough. The vote was withdrawn and the project was, for the moment, frozen. The turn towards the shipyard. After that blow to the continuity of the project, California Forever changed its arguments. Instead of first selling a city in the middle of nowhere, he now sells a plan of industrialization with connections to the military: a shipyard in which to build ships equipped with the latest technology in naval defense, and close to the Travis military base. The new plan pivots on two axes. On the one hand, the Solano Foundryan industrial park of about 850 hectares located just over an hour from San Francisco that aims to become the factory for robotics projects and materialize all the R&D of Silicon Valley. On the other hand, the Solano Shipyarda complex of about 3,035 hectares designed to house several shipyards dedicated to military and civil naval construction. The idea with this turn is clearly to first attract the industrial fabric and employment, and then cover the housing needs of its workers by building the city that had been projected from the beginning. Unions, Trump and what remains to be decided. To win over Solano this time, California Forever has played another card: unions. The company signed with the construction union council and the carpenters union a labor agreement for the next 40 years on the 28,328 hectares of land it owns, in which it undertakes to hire your affiliates in the construction of that city. The speech is also supported by national politics and from California Forever they defend that building shipyards on the west coast is necessary to stand up to Chinaand has sought to fit the project into the SHIPS Actthe law that Trump has promoted to reindustrialize the US naval industry. A report Commissioned by the Bay Area Council, it estimates some $215 billion in private investment and the generation of 530,000 jobs in this industrialization plan for the area. However, the shipyard remains without a permit from the county, and the chosen land is next to the Suisun Marsh protected areaone of the largest brackish water wetlands on the West Coast. Water, again, will decide if this project remains a promise or becomes something real. In Xataka | The other war between the US and China is in the shipyards Image | Unsplash (Daniel J. Schwarz, Charlie Huston)

Telecinco wanted to revolutionize its schedule for the summer in search of solutions for the audience. At the moment it’s a disaster

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Telecinco has changed half of its afternoon schedule to escape the worst season in its history. At the moment, however, the changes are not being noticed as much as Mediaset would have liked, and so far no program has reached 8% of share. There is still a lot of summer ahead, and in some cases, the headlines have barely had a couple of broadcasts, but we are certainly far from brilliant starts for these new programs whose structure, aesthetics and presenters smell of the company’s old glories. The figures. He date show by Carlos Lozano ‘Love… or whatever arises’ debuted on June 22 with 6.8% share and 632,000 spectators; the return of Paz Padilla to Telecinco after his rudeness with the now deceased ‘Sálvame’, ‘El show de Paz’, with 7.8% and 638,000; and the magazine of suns and gossip presented by Ion Aramendi and Kike Quintana ‘El Verano Se Move’, with 7%. The latter, the most recent premiere (this Monday), is the network’s third evening premiere in eight days, and the penultimate of a plan that Mediaset designed to get the network out of its worst historical moment. Some context: ‘El show de Paz’ occupies part of the time on weekends of ‘Fiesta’, Emma García’s magazine that had just had its two worst months in history (8.1% in April and 8.2% in May). If Padilla manages to settle at around 9% compared to his rivals (cinema on the rest of the channels) and, in the process, spreads a rise to ‘Fiesta’, he will have fulfilled his promise. And it remains to be seen what happens with the fourth piece of the plan, ‘From Monday to Fridaythe daily version of ‘De Viernes’ with Beatriz Archidona and Santi Acosta, which premieres on Monday, July 6 at 6:15 p.m., in the gap left by ‘El Diario de Jorge’ during the summer. Their litmus test is twofold: not to sink against ‘The Promise’, which averaged 12.6% in May, and to stand up to the World Cup matches that still lie ahead. Summer ahead. They have all just started and you have to give them some space. The only headline that has already been filming for a week is that of Carlos Lozano, which had been on the air for a week on the day of the premiere of ‘El Verano Se Move’. For that day, ‘Amor… or whatever arises’ had a minimum audience (5.4%), and right after, La 1 broadcast the Brazil-Japan of the Worldwhich swept with a 33.7% share and 3,075,000 viewers, and sank both ‘El Diario de Jorge’ and ‘Allá tú!’. Result: 7.2% on average, one of the worst Mondays in the history of Telecinco. The plan. Mediaset announced in mid-June a offensive of four new programs for the section from 3:45 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.: ‘Love… or whatever arises!’, ‘Summer moves’, ‘From Monday to Friday’ and ‘The Peace Show’. They all replace formats that had been moving between 8% and 10% for months, such as ‘El tiempo just’, whose presenter, Joaquín Prat, is on paternity leave. The program had been averaging 8.5% for two months in a row. share and it had barely exceeded double digits five times since its premiere, a far cry from ‘Sueños de Libertad’ on Antena 3, the undisputed leader of the after-dinner program with an average of 14.2% in May. The precedents. Telecinco arrives this summer with the worst possible figures: the 2025-2026 seasonwas the worst in the history of the channel: an 8.9% average share, eight tenths less than the previous year and the fifth consecutive time that Telecinco has set a new historical season low. For the first time, the channel fell below 10% share in the twelve months of the course, with a ceiling of 9.4% and a floor of 8.4% in December, its worst month in the regular season. The afternoon slot, which is now trying to be reformed, also closed the course at a historic low: 9%. And it is a deterioration that is not limited to entertainment: the network’s news They also posted their worst figure, 8.3% share, without any of their three editions reaching double digits on average. It can be compared, for example, with the increasingly firm La 1, which in the last five years has gone from 8.8% to 12.1%. Telecinco’s path has been practically the opposite, from 13.1% to 8.9%. The importance of football. We were talking about the World Cup as relevant when it came to giving the finishing touch to the Telecinco audiences, but the phenomenon goes further. La 1 closed June as the leading channel, with a 14.3% share, its best June in 15 years, with the World Cup contributing almost a quarter of its monthly result. The entire Mediaset group, on the other hand, lost 3.4 points year-on-year compared to an RTVE group that gained 4.4. Football is obviously determining which channel goes better and worse this summer. In Xataka | Telecinco has ‘El Rosco’ but does not have ‘Pasapalabra’. Antena 3 has ‘Pasapalabra’ but does not have ‘El Rosco’

I wanted to know the closest place to go see the eclipse. So I programmed an AI app to look for it

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Next August 12 I will be in Madrid, and that is a problem. And it is because Madrid will not be the optimal place to see the astronomical event of the century: the solar eclipse that that day will have millions of people watching the sky around 8:30 p.m. My idea is to go see it with my family in a location where it can be seen in its entirety for as long as possible, but I would also like not to go too far. There is tools such as those of the National Geographic Institute They tell us what the eclipse will look like in each location, but I didn’t want to know that, but rather where to go to see it taking into account distance and travel time. There may be tools that do something like this that I haven’t found, but yesterday, when thinking about the idea, I realized that I could actually try to make my own tool. AI models and platforms such as Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, or OpenCode have already shown that almost anyone can turn an idea into an app, and as you know I was already amazed by the possibilities. Why not try it? That’s just what I did. Try it. I told it yesterday on my personal blogand I also wanted to share the experience here. The first thing was to find out if something like this was feasible. There are several ways to solve that, but I tend to go with the “Deep Investigation” modes offered by current models. I wanted to try ChatGPT in its free version, which offers this possibility, and I made my proposal to him to find out if it was possible. After eight minutes going through sources on the internet, he presented me with a really complete “executive summary” in which he confirmed, among other things, that there was a good set of data sources that I could use for the application: the IGN and the National Observatory, for example, have public resources with a CC-BY license, there are astronomical APIs such as OPALE (IMCCE) either USNO/APODwhile for routes to destination it suggested OSRMa fantastic and open platform for this type of function. GLM-5.2 program like angels With that information under my power, I began development with the AI ​​platforms and models that I have been using lately. This was also a perfect opportunity to test how it behaved the GLM-5.2 model from Z.ai. I have been subscribed to the platform for a few months—I took advantage of an offer at the end of last year—and now that they have launched this model I have been testing it with small experiments. The performance seemed fantastic and certainly close to what the Claude Opus 4.8 or GPT-5.5 offer, so This was a fantastic opportunity to see how GLM-5.2 solved the problem.. What I did was create a directory on my Mac mini M4 (original name, “eclipse”), go into it and launch Claude Code preselecting the model I intended to use (claude –model glm-5.2). Once the AI ​​agent was started for scheduling, I explained my conversation with ChatGPT, copied the executive summary, and gave him some more guidelines to start planning everything. The conversation about the development of the project was long and GLM-5.2 ended up compacting it, but I asked him to show me a summary of that original plan. This was the idea. GLM-5.2 is a model that “thinks” quite a bit, and I like that it does: it makes the responses much more precise and complete in my experience, so even that first plan took a few minutes to get ready. When he presented it I thought everything was fantastic. I reviewed it, but I’m not a developer, so I simply relied on GLM-5.2 when choosing technical options for the entire project and looked more at the requirements and objectives that the plan established. I didn’t capture that part of the conversation and since I ended up “conversing” quite a bit later, Claude Code and GLM-5.2 compacted the conversation to avoid excessive token consumption. Even so, I have now asked him to show me what he had saved in that compaction, and that screenshot above shows a little what the idea for the development was. Everything seemed perfect, I insist, so I told Claude Code / GLM-5.2 to get going. And boy did he do it: spent 42 minutes creating and editing files without me having to intervene at all. When he finished (again, I didn’t take a screenshot of the terminal) he showed me a summary of what he had done, and told me how I could test the project. A few small commands in a separate terminal window to launch the web application and voila: I could now see the project in my browser. The first look left me stunned: the thing was promising. This is what I saw when I first opened the project in my browser. Some mistakes, yes, but nothing bad. I found the interface spectacular, but after a few seconds I began to detect errors. The “Distance” shown in the “Journey” part was unrealistic, and the locations chosen from Madrid were much further away than I had assumed. For some reason I had made some incorrect decisions when choosing these locations, so I started “chatting” with GLM-5.2 in Claude Code to correct everything. That process was entertaining and trivial: I told him what was wrong (“you are showing very distant destinations, a good option for example from Madrid is Lerma and you don’t show it”), and from there GLM-5.2 thought and thought to make its modifications. He presented them to me, I reviewed them and started again. After three or four attempts and another half hour of tests, things were already very clear. The recommendations from Madrid were great, and I considered several options in which I prioritized time to arrive (highway/highway) over distance, and of course, time of totality of the eclipse: the closer you get … Read more

2,000 years ago they wanted to build a temple to the goddess Minerva in Cuenca. They ended up doing it in the most unlikely place

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In a quarry one expects to basically find workers, machinery and stacked blocks. It is like this today and it was probably like this (with obvious differences) in times of the Roman Empire, when the stonemasons of Hispania dug in the mountains and caves of the peninsula in search of deposits. In a quarry exploited between the 1st and 4th centuries AD in Cuenca, archaeologists have however found Anything else: a temple of 2,000 years dedicated to Minerva. From a simple quarry to a temple. What has happened? that archaeologists have found a fascinating find in Carrascosa del Campo, in the municipality of Campos del Paraíso (Cuenca): a temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva. The discovery is interesting because of the value of the carving itself, but what makes it really special is its context. The aedicula It was not erected in the center of a city, the courtyard of a wealthy villa or on the walls of a sanctuary. The votive piece was carved into the rock of a quarry. Its creators carved it in front of the site, a place where it was surely easier to meet stonemasons than priests. What is the sanctuary like? The temple is located in a place known as Peña de la Saceda and experts estimate that it was carved between mid-2nd century and early 3rd century AD The complex is made up of pilasters, capitals, a triangular pediment and a carved entablature, which imitates a small sanctuary. Although the representation of the goddess Minerva has been greatly deteriorated over the centuries, experts have identified her traditional attributes (helmet, spear and peplum) and an owl, an icon used as a symbol of the goddess. Do we know anything else? “There is barely a glimpse of the goddess Minerva. What can be clearly seen is an owl, which is the totemic bird that represents Minera,” explains in the SER Juan Carlos Guisado di Monti, one of the archaeologists who signed the article from the magazine Mantva in which the discovery was revealed. The relief is accompanied by a brief inscription at the bottom of the aedicula, in which can be read: “Minervae dominae Ploti vs cun svo comitato”, that is to say: “To Minerva Domina, (dedicated) Plotius Vigor with his retinue.” And where did they find it? That’s the key. The temple, 0.7 m wide by 0.5 m high, was conceived as “a small facade carved directly into one of the stone fronts of the quarry.” Its authors carved the complex out of sandstone rock, and they did so in the quarry itself, not in a remote space. This is not a minor detail, since it tells us about a connection between the profane and the sacred, how a quarry, an a priori functional space focused on work, could also acquire a sacred meaning with a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, arts, strategy and craftsmanship. Is it something unique? “There are other temples dedicated to gods in other quarries, but in Spain until now none dedicated to Minerva had been discovered. This is the most important and surprising discovery, because it suggests that the quarry workers made their ‘votes’ to the goddess, for the work they were doing,” details in elDiario Dionisio Urbina, who has directed the excavations at the Roman site for more than a decade. Equally relevant is the brief inscription located at the bottom of the temple and which includes the formula “cum suo comitato”which suggests to archaeologists that the offering was not individual, but rather came from a group. What were the quarries? The temple was located just 15 km from Segóbrigaan important deposit that includes a theater inaugurated in the time of Emperor Vespasian, in the 1st century AD. As the authors of the study recall, the area was also known for the mines of lapis specularisa selenite gypsum stone highly appreciated in Rome for the manufacture of windows and whose exploitation generated wealth in the region. Now the temple discovered in Carrascosa del Campo reveals something else to us: the veneration of Minerva. “The rock sanctuary of Minerva constitutes a find of special value. The old quarry, transformed into a place of devotion, shows how the Roman religion was not only expressed in the large urban or peri-urban sanctuaries, but also in rural and productive enclaves where the community, the workers or their promoters sought protection and left both their veneration of the goddess and the memory of their vow inscribed in the rock,” they conclude the researchers. The discovery, yes, has come accompanied by some controversy. After the news circulated in recent days in general media, the director of the Cerro de la Muela excavation recalled that the work is still “in progress” and regretted what he considers an “unauthorized dissemination” of the results. Images | Government of Castilla-La Mancha and Wikipedia In Xataka | In 1778 Mozart attempted to teach composition to a French noblewoman. It didn’t go well at all, but thanks to her we now have unpublished works

NASA wanted to keep a key antenna active. A culture of “personal heroism” ended up achieving the opposite

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There are infrastructures that seem made to escape the problems of the Earth. The Deep Space Network from NASA is one of them: a network of giant antennas designed to communicate with probes and ships that travel far beyond our immediate environment. But even a system designed to talk to deep space depends on something much closer: trained people, clear procedures and decisions made under pressure. What a space agency investigation has just pointed out is not only a costly breakdown, but a weakness that is difficult to ignore in a network that we take for granted. The Goldstone Incident. The episode occurred on the DSS-14 antenna, a 70 meter facility located in the Goldstone complexin California. NASA published a version with redacted parts of the final report on the incident recorded on September 16, 2025, which left the antenna out of service since then. The damage occurred when the structure rotated beyond its limits and stressed cables and hoses, including those for the fire suppression system. The consequence was a flooding of the base with more than 750,000 liters of water containing glycol and estimated damages between 4.1 and 4.6 million dollars. The incident chain. The report does not allow each step to be reconstructed with complete clarity, because the public version hides almost all the details of the six critical events identified by NASA. The failure did not appear suddenly. First there was a hydraulic limit system that stopped working at an unspecified time, then an anomaly on September 15 during a communication with Juno and then maintenance and diagnostic tasks. In this process, the antenna was taken several times to its rotation limits, until the safety margin ended up disappearing. The weak point. If this story is surprising, it is because it takes place in a place where we tend to imagine everything measured, written and reviewed down to the last detail. But the NASA investigation describes something much more earthly: insufficient training, procedures that were not up to par, and too much reliance on undocumented routines within the facility. In a network like the DSN, designed to maintain communications with very distant missions, this changes the reading of the incident. It was not just an antenna that turned too much, but an organization that, at that particular point, had left too much room for the informal. Misunderstood heroism. The report also points out a work culture based on what he calls “personal heroism,” an expression to describe teams willing to do what is necessary to keep the antenna going. On paper it sounds like a compromise, but research presents it as part of the problem. That drive led some people to take on tasks outside their qualifications, work long hours until they accumulated fatigue, and skip tests that could delay their return to operations. The conclusion is harsh: having agreed to leave the antenna in a failed state would probably have prevented the outcome. Specific duties. The report includes 20 recommendations, with one especially clear idea: NASA needs to encourage technical rigor over “personal heroism.” From there, internal correction measures come in, such as reinforcing training and reviewing procedures. Additionally, the agency is looking for similar scenarios beyond the Deep Space Network itself. Deep Space Network. DSS-14 is not just any antenna within the Deep Space Network. It is one of the three 70-meter antennas in the network, the largest category within a system made up of 14 antennas distributed between California, Australia and Spain. In early 2026, it looked like the antenna would return to service in May, before being taken out of operation in August for a major upgrade scheduled until October 2028. NASA, however, now maintains that it will remain out of service, although the DSN will remain operational thanks to the other antennas in the network. Images | POT In Xataka | Voyager 1 will reach a light-day distance in November, but this will be its last major record

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