wonderful

The rain in Seville is wonderful and now it is also converted into energy with the new CSIC solar panels

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If there is a renewable energy that has emerged in recent years, it is solar, as can be seen in this graph of the International Energy Agency. However, solar energy still has its limitations: it requires space (hence there are projects in lakes and in the open sea) and of course, it depends on whether there is sun. Yes, putting batteries can cushion that irregular supply (here Spain is a powerhouse), but a research team from the University of Seville with the CSIC has given a twist to classic photovoltaic panels and now can generate electricity with rain. Context. Solar panels lose effectiveness when full sun does not fall on them, either because there are clouds or it rains. Therefore, the ideal scenario is midday on a sunny day, but spoiler: this happens less times than you need to plug something in. Not to mention devices that need continuous and autonomous energy supply, no matter what happens in the electrical grid. The battery option allows us to satisfy the supply on demand and although now They are at their minimum pricestill involves purchasing another component, considering its useful life and its management as waste. The invention. As explains the CSIChave developed a hybrid device that allows capturing energy from both the sun and rain, and also doing so at the same time. As? With a sheet thinner than a human hair (100 nanometers) superimposed on the solar cells. It works on two fronts at the same time: on the one hand as a protective encapsulant for perovskite solar cells, improving their durability in adverse conditions. On the other hand, as a triboelectric nanogenerator: it converts the impact of raindrops into electricity due to friction. Thus, it is capable of producing up to 110 volts, enough to light LEDs or power sensors. Why is it important. Because if this technology is commercialized, it will open the doors for completely autonomous electronic devices to function without batteries or plugs. This is the case of the implementation of IoT outdoors or in remote areas without access to the electrical grid. It serves as an example of use in applications in rural infrastructure or agriculture, such as environmental sensors, weather stations, urban signage or auxiliary lighting. The innovation is not only generating energy from rain, but integrating it all into a single thin layer that solves the main Achilles heel of perovskite: its environmental degradation. In fact, science had already proven with taurine from octopuses. How have they done it. To carry out this device, they used plasma technology to deposit plasma technology in a similar way to that implemented in mobile screens. For the base, perovskite cells, a material with better efficiency and lower cost than traditional silicon, but fragile under conditions such as humidity. The use of triboelectric materials is not new: a research team from the University of Hong Kong a few years ago something similar occurred to him: the generation of electricity by the simple friction of droplets upon impact, such as static electricity generated by rubbing a balloon. Yes, but. Although technically speaking they have generated electricity, the reality is that it is high voltage but low intensity, which in practice is not even useful for charging a mobile phone. And although the perovskite is reinforced with this sheet, in the long term it is still less durable than silicon, so it still has pending issues. Likewise, there remains the great challenge of leaving the laboratory and validating these experiments in real environments. If production can be scaled to an industrial level, another challenge would arise: keeping costs low. In Xataka | Europe produces more clean electricity than fossil electricity for the first time. The hard part starts now In Xataka | Solar panels have an invisible and very brief moment in which they do not work. And solving it is key to your future Cover | Lara John

There are wonderful Androids for less than 700 euros. The point is that almost no one buys them, and Apple knows it

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Yesterday Apple renewed its entry-level iPhone. He iPhone 17e It has arrived as a discreet renewal of a model that, already in 2025, had some important shortcomings. Were consumers outraged? Quite the opposite. He iPhone 16e sold like hot cakesand this is exactly what Apple is looking for again. There is competition, and better. The iPhone 17e has a price of 709 euros. They are not the 959 euros of a iPhone 17but it is not an economical mobile. It is a price for which we can buy authentic high-end phones on Android. For example, the LITTLE F8 Ultrawith Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (same processor that the 1,500 euro phones have), 12 GB of RAM, 120 Hz AMOLED panel with 3,500 nits, 6,500mAh battery with 100W charging. There are dozens of examples like this. Even if we are willing to buy a mobile phone that has been on the market for a few months, we can get a Galaxy S25 or a iPhone 16. Phones that do not have the latest processor, but are superior in the rest of the technical specifications. None of this matters. The most nerd We shake our heads when we look at the technical sheet. But in the real world, the technical sheet is the least important thing. Apple doesn’t sell specs, it sells experience. A cheaper access iPhone than the rest. The latest chip to execute the functions of its older brothers. A design that many find comfortable, practical and pleasant. A higher update cycle than many of its direct rivals. Entry mobile to the Apple ecosystem, completely new and unpretentious. It works for Apple. The iPhone 16e has sold much more than the iPhone SE 2022a model that was more reminiscent of iPhone 6 than to the new Apple phones. It’s a formula that makes sense, one in which an iPhone is sold as a natural leap from a iPhone 11 either 12 (in fact, Apple does not allow comparisons with superior mobile phones on the advertisement page), and not as a technical display. You come from an old iPhone, you want a new one and not break the bank. You buy this one. Go deeper. Nobody sells more high-end mobile phones than Apple, not even in countries like China. The reflection of the iPhone 17e is curious: it is not even a high-end device, but the iPhone 16e managed to sneak into the list of the 10 best-selling mobile phones in the world. Apple does not sell iPhones because they are high-end mobile phones. It sells iPhones because they are iPhones. Image | Xataka In Xataka | iPhone 17 Pro Max, analysis: the change that the most ambitious iPhone needed is not visible to the naked eye

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has shown us a wonderful future. One full of screens with privacy technology

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Many revolutions come without us realizing it and by surprise. As if they were a supporting actor that no one seemed to pay attention to and turns out to be the real star of the movie: This is how the privacy screen arrived of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: an innovation that no one expected and that made the AI ​​or the cameras of that mobile barely matter. Because although all those things add up, they are an evolution that we were all waiting for. But the privacy screen thing is something else: it is an everyday revolution and so obvious that one can only think how it is possible that we are in 2026 and no one would have invented something like this before. Samsung, as our colleague Ana Boria rightly says – please, don’t miss the Short -, has suddenly destroyed the entire industry of tempered glass that protects privacy. For years we have seen how it was possible to add a “privacy protector” in the form of protective glass to our mobile phone or laptop. With it it was possible to prevent any curious/gossip from taking a look at our device over our shoulder, but Samsung has made these protectors no longer necessary, because it has shown us how this technology can be part of the device’s screen itself. The idea is not entirely new, of course. HP has already applied a similar idea in some of its laptops a whopping 10 years ago. He called it Sure View and developed it in collaboration with 3M. That technology effectively allowed the viewing angles of the EliteBook 1040 and 840 to be critically reduced, but the proposal did not seem to work. Image: Samsung. Samsung, however, has gone a step further because this privacy screen can not only be activated and deactivated whenever we want: it can even be activated or deactivated in a personalized way for each application: if you want the privacy screen mode to be activated every time you look at your bank application, you just have to select this option in the settings. The customization of this feature is also extraordinaryand Samsung allows you to adjust it so that it is activated automatically, for example, when we receive notifications, or that the screen also goes into “anti-gossip” mode just when we are entering a PIN for an application. With the function activated, the screen only looks good to those looking at it from the front. This is one of those ideas that show that not everything is invented in the world of technology and that a real practical and everyday improvement as “silly” as this can be much more important and impactful than some AI options that remain fireworks. In fact, here Samsung has surprised us with an innovation that should make apple blush: the Cupertino company does not stop boasting that They are the champions of privacyand although they have certainly traditionally stood out in this section, here Samsung has left them biting the dust. To them and to everyone. Privacy screens have already become one of the clear technological innovations of 2026. Now We just hope that all manufacturers follow the story and end up implementing similar systems on their mobile phones. That may take some time, of course, but today it seems inevitable to think that what Samsung has done is open the door to a wonderful future in which we will be much safer from gossip. Good for Samsung. In Xataka | Image | Xataka with Freepik

We have been experiencing a great war between the Xbox and the PlayStation for 25 years. And that’s wonderful: Crossover 1×38

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The clear things and the thick chocolate: I’m from Xbox. I have been almost always, although my first real console was the original PlayStation. Then, for various reasons, I decided to try the original Xbox and loved it, and have ended up owning all of its successors. But that doesn’t stop me from knowing that Spain is a country of Play. I respect and accept it, but what I also value is that this “console war” continues to be so active, because that competition not only allows us some fun and laughter with friends – “Do you really have an Xbox!?!?” – but above all because it has allowed both evolve amazingly. And precisely that war between the Xbox and the PlayStation we talk about in this installment of Crossover, in which both Jose and I We talk about our experiences and the history of these platforms accompanied, of course, by Jaume, who moderates and as always asks the right questions. Thus, we review the birth of the first PlayStation and Xbox and how that completely changed a market that previously seemed dominated by Sega and Nintendo. The latter has never directly entered into competition with Sony and Microsoft, and has chosen a different path and in which it has certainly done extraordinarily well. But what is clear is that the evolution of the Xbox and the PlayStation marked us all and in that review we talk about all those decisions, how each of the generations fared and what the future may hold for us. The final question, “Who won the console war?”may have a valid answer for the current moment, but the best of all is that we are facing platforms that are absolutely alive and that are preparing the most interesting news in the short term. Not only of them, of course, also with promising projects like the Steam Machine. Meanwhile, whether you are from Xbox or Play, we have a single message. Long live video games. On YouTube | Crossover In Xataka | There is brutal competition for our attention. And there is someone losing that battle in a bloody way: the consoles

I’ve been using Google Maps for years and I didn’t know this button. It is wonderful to follow routes on foot

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Although There are more and more optionsGoogle Maps is still The queen of navigation apps. But even the most used app, there are functions that not everyone knowsI the first. Today we talk about an option that makes Google Maps is much more intuitive on foot routes. Google Maps on foot is not the same as by car It is obvious, but the simple fact that the car moves faster makes it very easier to know what direction we have to go. When we use the routes on foot, sometimes the pointer does not move until we walk a considerable distance and, If we have confused ourselves, we will have to return to where we have come. I confess that it has happened to me many times. In addition, although generally the compass indicates the direction without having to move, but that lifts our hand who has not had problems with this. Many times the compass does not work well and It is necessary to calibrate it. With this function the headaches are over. The augmented reality to rescue 13 tricks to get the most out of Google Maps If you are going to follow a route on foot, Live View is your best ally. It is a function that uses augmented reality and indicates why we must continue in a much more visual and intuitive way. To activate it you just have to click on The camera button which appears on the icons on the right side of the screen. When you activate Live View for the first time, a notice like the one you can see on these lines appears and you will also have to accept the camera permits. Then he will ask you to notice with the camera to your surroundings to be able to “scan” the buildings and, once completed, you will see an arrow superimposed on the image which tells you where you should keep walking. Live View is a veteran function on Google Maps (arrived in 2019) and is available in all areas where we have the option to use Google Street View. However, it is not a super known option and, at least, it has turned out Very useful especially being traveling In new cities. In Xataka | A small town in Holland has the solution to mass tourism: to fool Google Maps

I wanted to set up my own Google photos. I have achieved it thanks to a wonderful alternative Open Source

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I have a particular obsession to have my photos well organized. As I have been fighting with this for a few years, I have tried a good handful of solutions, and for example I enjoyed Picasa –Google killed him, like Reader– And I also tried solutions like Synology photos Following the steps From my partner Alejandro Nieto. The goal has always been the same: Google photos of Googlea service that is wonderful but that like other services in the cloud, it worries me because I don’t know what my photos can be used. They assure They are not used for advertising purposes, but can be used to improve their automatic learning algorithms in image recognition. A custom nas The cloud is fantastic in many things and for many users, but as I say, I preferred to mount it at my home. Recently I counted this whole search process and tests in more detail in my blogand now I wanted to take advantage of it also in Xataka. About a year ago looking for new alternatives, and to achieve a decision I rode a nas With 30 hard drive, 4 TB of SSD and a modest plate and processor because it sought more efficiency than power. My NAS, in a Jonsbo N2 box with hard drives bays. There was also detailed research process to choose the operating system with which to control everything. There are many and varied options for NAS, although I would say that among the most prominent are unraid, thunder (formerly Freenes), proxmox, OpenMediavault or Casaos. After documenting, reading and watching videos I ended up deciding on Unraida very veteran and respected project. The “Starter” license costs 49 dollars and is valid for machines with up to six disk units, and I thought it was very good option. Putting everything in motion took some time: this is not like installing Windows on a PC, and I also wanted to have a very specific configuration to use the ZFS file system for the three hard disk units configured in Raidz (Raidz1 ), Something that when I settled I had just started to be available in Unraid. Solved that, I migrated all the data of my old NAS, an old Synology DS-212J who gave me many joys but that began to fall short in many things. That also took time, because I wanted to take the opportunity to reorganize the small chaos in which some folders that had used almost as “digital storages” had become. Testing alternatives to Google photos Once that was resolved, I could start trying different alternatives to manage my photos. Here Unraid is especially wonderful, because it allows (like other systems for NAS, certainly) to assemble services separately and easily isolated, especially thanks to Docker. UNRAID’s “App Store” with the different types of autosted services that you can install on your server at click. That makes you become 5, 10 or 100 servers. Those you want and those that your hardware allows, of course. And the same with virtual machines, that I do not use just but that are an equally interesting option to get your server more. I have ended up installing about 15 servers in my nas, although the vast majority are usually deactivated. Be that as it may, Unraid has its own “App Store”and in it there are dozens and dozens of possible services that you can ride on your server to run them from there and have your own cloud essence with your local services. There are alternatives for almost everything that exists on the Internet: you can mount your email, music, your web server, download, databases, or, of course … photos. And this is where it was time to try alternatives that seemed interesting and on which I had already investigated. Others met them along the way, but thanks to Unraid and Docker’s magic starting these alternatives is a matter of minutes. Then, of course, there is an import process of the photos – if you have many, that can take to days – but I reduced the import to a small subset of photos for the tests. First of all, I must say that what is clear is that in this field there is everything, and for all. The options are very varied both in their reach and in their way of “attacking” the problem, but I had certain priorities. In essence I wanted a good alternative to Google photos that inherited its virtues (interface, chronological organization, favorite management, perhaps facial and object recognition). Photosyructure is an original, different and very powerful alternative. That made some projects quickly discard that they did not fit me but that can be great for many users. Among them were Piwigo, Photonix, Chevereto, Damselfly, Lycheeeither PhotoViewbut there are certainly more. The thing however interesting with Some really serious and very striking alternatives. I had already tried Photosyructure And I loved his interface with that first page of random photo team, but they did not fit their favorite management (subscription to enable that option) or its interface, which is not focused on the chronological order. LIBHOTOS I looked great, but it was not easily installed (I was not in the “App Store” of Unraid) and gave me many problems, probably because I did something wrong when riding it. I also tried NextCloud Photos, curious option if you are already users of NextCloud Photos and its improved version, Memoriesbut the interface and some options were not entirely fine. The one who really put things difficult was Photoprismone of the most popular options among those looking for alternatives to Google photos. His options are extraordinary, and the only thing that really backed down is that it seems to me an option that focuses more on organizing your photos (the power here is amazing) than to enjoy them. The interface did not fall in love either, but it always remained as a great candidate if other options did not convince me anymore. I finally discovered a candidate … Read more

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