Ceuta aside, this has been a juicy week in two matters of heated debate. The super-luxury penthouse of the Community of Madrid for Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the signing of the lively Erola Jons, supposedly to liven up the Vuelta a España cycling race. Notice that there are…
Experts say that the least important thing is the more than 17 billion that Meta pays to acknowledge that the tools applied on Facebook and Instagram were designed to turn minors into addicts without caring about their mental health. Just last year Meta earned…
The out-of-court settlement that Meta reached on Wednesday with a coalition of prosecutors from dozens of U.S. states, under which it agrees to pay an amount of up to about $18 billion over about 10 years, may seem like a blow to Mark Zuckerberg’s company, but it is barely a scratch. In the same Wall Street trading session, the market already returned a market value increase of 1% – which represents between 122% and 86% of what it may end up paying the states based on the agreements reached. The algorithm that supports the business model will not be affected despite the time and age restrictions that the company has committed to assume. In any case, the agreement only binds the tech company in U.S. territory and not in the rest of the world.
Meta’s plaintiffs, with whom it has reached an agreement that still needs to be validated by the judge in charge of the case, were 47 of the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia and some territories of the country. The agreement will oblige Mark Zuckerberg’s company not only to pay 17.100 million dollars in fines, but also to introduce changes in its social networks to try to correct the risks of addiction it causes in minors, in addition to strengthening the age verification system and parental controls.
The situation looked very bad, and Mark Zuckerberg did not want to face the risk of a conviction of up to 1.4 trillion dollars, which would endanger his company, especially as more and more cases emerge.
Lindsay Clancy, 36 years old, has become the conscience of the United States.
Australia has just paused the visas of the working holiday program from 24 countries, including Spain. This temporary visa constitutes a legal way that allows young people to live and work in the country for one year. The quota assigned for Spaniards is 3,400 in total.
Two weeks ago, the journal Science published a paper by researchers from Stanford University (Samuel H. King et al.) who used two genomic language AI models, Evo 1 and Evo 2, to create the complete genomes of 16 new viruses capable of successfully attacking the bacterium Escherichia coli C. Beyond what this scientific achievement entails, the fact that an artificial intelligence is capable of generating viruses that do not exist in nature raises new alarms. The authors created bacteriophage viruses – which do not attack animal cells – and applied strict safety measures, ensuring that their creation did not leave the laboratory. But the inevitability of Murphy’s law points out that if something can happen, it will eventually happen. Biosafety needs to prepare for this new technoscientific capability.
There is still a year left to witness what will be the “eclipse of the century.” On August 2, 2027, the phenomenon will be visible from practically all of Spain, but only in the south of Andalusia, Ceuta, and Melilla will the Moon completely cover the Sun, plunging the day into night. Still recovering from the eclipse of last August 12, reservations for houses, apartments, and rooms have already skyrocketed in provinces such as Cádiz, Málaga, Granada, and Almería. And, with them, the prices.
This Saturday, the Costa Daurada woke up to the consequences of the torrential rains that during the past night have caused several injuries, material damage, and flooding in municipalities along the coast of Baix Penedès and Tarragonès. In just a few hours, up to 200 liters per square meter were recorded, leaving behind serious impacts: from people trapped in their vehicles to tourists who were finishing their vacations and have been left without accommodation or, in some cases, without a way to return home.
