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Alexa and Echo will arrive in Italy and Spain later this year
Amazon's plan to put Alexa everywhere is extending from homes to hotels and, soon, the Mediterranean. It will bring Alexa and the various Echo devices to Spain and Italy later this year. Sonos and Bose will also start selling their Alexa-enabled devices in those countries before the year's out.
Spanish soccer league app spied on fans to catch pirate broadcasts
Is your phone listening to you? After all, there has to be a reason why so many apps ask to access your device's microphone. App makers and websites have long dismissed creepily relevant adverts as merely "targeted advertising", but now one app has revealed the unnerving potential of this permission. Spanish soccer league app, La Liga, has admitted to spying on users, and in doing so it's turning sports fans into unknowing snitches.
Live from Samsung's Galaxy S9 event at MWC 2018!
Today is the day Samsung will be unveiling its highly anticipated Galaxy S9, the company's latest flagship smartphone. As we discussed earlier this week, you can expect an improved, smarter camera on the handset, as well as an answer to Apple's Animojis, animated emojis that will use face recognition technology to make your phone more interactive when you message friends or family. We'll learn all about the Galaxy S9 in the next few hours, so stay tuned to this post to keep up with the action as it happens. The event kicks off at 12PM ET/6PM Barcelona time. Enjoy!
Facebook fined in Spain for allegedly misusing personal data
Facebook has been fined €1.2 million (roughly $1.4 million) for several instances where the social network may have collected Spanish user data without fully informing people how it would be used. Retuers reports that Spain's Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD; Spanish Data Protection Agency) found three instances of Facebook not "sufficiently" informing users how their gender, religious beliefs, personal tastes and browsing history would be used.
EU countries aim to raise tech firms' taxes by targeting revenue
It's no secret that European countries want major tech firms to pay more taxes, but how will they go about that beyond collecting back taxes? By taxing the companies where they'll feel it the most, that's how. The finance ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Spain have written a joint letter to the European Union's presidency and Commission calling for taxes on tech giants' revenues, not just their profits. The four nations want the Commission to produce an "equalization tax" that would make companies pay the equivalent of the corporate tax in the countries where they earn revenue.
Burger Clan and the weird history of awkward video game promos
Executives at Burger King are convinced playing video games makes people really, really hungry. Like, debilitatingly hungry. So hungry, in fact, that they can't take a few minutes to grab a snack, order a pizza or even look away from the screen. Thankfully for starved players in Madrid, Spain, Burger King and Sony have rolled out a solution to this dining dilemma: Burger Clan.
VR out-of-body experience could help assuage the fear of death
A virtual reality experience developed by researchers from the University of Barcelona could help people with a crippling fear of death. Research professor Mel Slater and his colleagues made 32 subjects wear Oculus headsets and black suits. They also attached a bunch of movement trackers and vibrators to their ankles and wrists. With those components in place, the subjects' virtual bodies could match their real movements in the experience. Every time a VR ball hits their wrist or ankle, the vibrators would go off, as well. Both elements helped fool the volunteers' brain into thinking that the virtual body was their own, similar to the rubber hand illusion.
Cancer consumes fat to feed its metastatic march in mice
Stopping cancer in its tracks may be easier than we thought and possible without debilitating rounds of chemo and radiation therapies. All we have to do is take away its energy source. Researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology in Spain have discovered that a cancerous cell's metastasization -- the process through which the disease spreads throughout the body -- relies heavily on the presence of a single molecule which allows the cells to absorb lipid fats from their environment.
Google's Spanish offices raided in tax investigation
Google is no stranger to tax investigations, but in recent months, European investigators have taken things up a notch. Coming just a month after tax inspectors raided the company's French HQ, Spanish officials today cast the spotlight on its operations in Madrid as part of an ongoing probe into its tax contributions.
HBO is bringing a cord-cutter streaming service to Spain
HBO's planning to introduce a standalone streaming service in Spain, Bloomberg Business reports. The TV network is said to be eager to take on Netflix across that European region, as it looks to increase its offerings for cord-cutters worldwide. Right now, it's unclear whether this would be a version of Now, the pay-TV-free service HBO announced last April during an Apple event. But, according to the news publication, HBO is expected to launch the service in Spain by the end of the year.
Log into most any Linux system by hitting backspace 28 times
Security researchers have discovered a ludicrously simple way to hack into a number of Linux distributions: Just tap the backspace key 28 times in a row. A team from the Cybersecurity Group at Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) in Spain found that doing so for builds utilizing the ubiquitous Grub2 bootloader -- that's to say just about all of them -- immediately bypasses the lock screen, initiates the "Grub rescue shell" and grants the user access to the system for whatever nefarious things they have in mind.
Apple Pay comes to Australia and Canada this year
At last, Apple Pay will be available outside of the US and the UK... if you have the right credit card. Tim Cook used his company's fiscal results call to confirm that the tap-to-pay service will be available in Australia and Canada by the end of 2015, while Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain will get it in early 2016. However, it sounds as if you'll be limited to using an American Express card at first. Despite leaks, you probably won't be using any other account for iPhone-based purchases on launch. It's likely that other providers will get with the program, though, so don't despair if you prefer MasterCard or Visa.
Lexus let skateboarders put its hoverboard to the test
After weeks of teasing, Lexus is finally showing off its latest Amazing in Motion project in full. The Slide video posted today shows skateboarders riding the company's superconducting hoverboard at a specially built skate park in Spain. Similar to the $10,000 Hendo hoverboard before it, this board only works if you have the combination of a liquid nitrogen cooled cryostat onboard and a special magnetic track, so no -- it's not for sale. As you can see in the video, skaters who got their crack at it pulled off some cool gliding tricks (including one across a stretch of water), but it's still not quite the same thing as the decks that they're used to, and seemed to have less control available than the Hendo board. Back to the Future it ain't, but it's real, and it's cool (-197°C).
EU to decide whether or not Uber is a transportation service
Uber has repeatedly insisted that it's not just a ridesharing company, but that interpretation is about to get an important test. A Spanish judge has requested that the European Court of Justice determine whether or not Uber is a generic "digital service," as it claims, or a "mere transport activity." If it's the former, European Union countries may have to rethink court rulings and laws that ban Uber. If the court deems Uber a transportation firm, however, the company may have no choice but to obey the same licensing and safety rules as taxis and other hired vehicles. While Uber will undoubtedly be ecstatic if it's victorious, it also risks losing one of its most important legal defenses. [Image credit: AP Photo/Bertrand Combaldieu]
Drones are pestering Spain's royal family
France isn't the only European country grappling with suspicious drone flights, it seems. Reportedly, guards at the Spanish royal family's La Zarzuela palace have spotted numerous robotic aircraft flying through its airspace at night, including the residences. That's bad enough by itself, but the kicker is that radio jamming isn't working -- short of breaking out guns, the guards can't just bring these machines down.
Netflix is coming to Spain, Italy and Portugal in October
Netflix wants to grow from servicing its current list of 50 countries to 200 in the next couple of years and now we know three of the new ones coming soon. Earlier this week it added Spain to the list, followed up by Italy, and today it announced Portugal too. Already available in 13 European countries, Netflix will come to all three of those in October. Four years ago Netflix was just staffing up for its rollout in Canada, and now a plan to cover much of the world is within reach, it's funny how time flies.
Holograms replace people in Spanish protests
Spain's imminent Citizen Safety Law isn't exactly protester-friendly -- you can face stiff fines just for daring to disobey police peacefully, let alone holding a protest without telling the government. The activists of Hologramas por la Libertad have found a clever workaround for that, however. As the name suggests, they're using holographic protesters to challenge the new legal restrictions. People worldwide were invited to record video (or text and voice, if they preferred) that would be converted into holograms marching in front of the Spanish Parliament. If you aren't allowed to protest in person, the movement argues, you can still protest as an optical illusion.
Uber gets a second shot in Spain as a food delivery service
Uber still can't operate as a car-hailing service in Spain after being banned last year, but there's apparently no stopping it from bringing its other offerings into the country. So, the company has launched an on-demand food delivery service in Barcelona called UberEats, which brings customers meals from local restaurants within around 10 minutes. Sound familiar? That's because it's better known as "UberFresh" stateside... or at least in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, where it's available. Uber is working with Barcelona food guide website Plateselector to create a meal rotation, and everyday it's drivers' cars are stocked with packaged food for delivery.
Spanish publishers want Google News to come back
Spain's old-school media clearly has a more complicated relationship with the internet than it first thought. Mere hours after Google shut down its News service in the country to avoid a law that will make it pay for article results, the Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association (AEDE) is asking for the government to make Google come back. They claim that Google is too "dominant" in the market to simply leave, and that its absence will "undoubtedly have a negative impact" on both businesses and the public. AEDE insists that it's willing to negotiate to keep News around, but it believes that Google refuses to take a "neutral stance."
Google to kill News service in Spain due to new law
Google News for Spain will be nothing but a memory after December 16th. The tech titan has announced that it's shutting down the service in the country, half a month before what's dubbed as the "Google tax" law takes effect on January 1st, 2015. This law, which the parliament passed in October, will require Google to pay websites for publishing any part of their content (even if it's just a headline) on its News page. It doesn't matter if a publisher doesn't agree with the law either: nobody can opt out. Instead of paying up, though, the company has chosen to kill the service completely -- it claims it doesn't make money from News as it doesn't display ads on the site, so shelling out money for licensing fees isn't viable. Also, Google will stop showing Spanish websites in any edition of News, even if it's for another Spanish-speaking country.
