If yours is on this list, you have a problem

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We are entering a reality in which passwords are going to stop being important that they have now. However, until that happens, it doesn’t cost you anything to check the passwords you have set for critical services such as your bank app or your email account, among others. Millions of people around the world they continue betting on keys such as “1234”, “123456” and the like, which any attacker can exploit in less time than it takes to write them. Below these lines we have left you a list of the most frequent ones to encourage you to take a look at one of the pillars of our digital security. We remain the same. Every year, cybersecurity company reports like NordPasswhich analyzes real data leaks extracted from security breaches and repositories of the dark webpublish the list of the most used passwords. And every year, the result is the same: predictable number sequences and keyboard combinations so obvious that it seems we haven’t learned our lesson. Spain, without leaving the norm. If we filter the data by country, the list of most used passwords in Spain is not too surprising. According to NordPass‘admin’, ‘123456’ and ‘12345678’ are the three most used passwords in Spain. In the Visual Capitalist chart that we shared with you last year, one of the most used in our country is ‘Spain’, which yes, is somewhat more resistant, but it is another one that would take a hacker a few minutes to decipher and which is still a key that no one should use. In the NordPass report, it is curious that further down the list appear passwords like ‘Nacho2006’, ‘1234ivan’ or ‘Talocha1’, which are a little more resistant, but practically as simple and vulnerable. Do you have any of these fixed?. On a global scale, the NordPass report ranks ‘123456’ as the most used password on the planet, with more than 21 million recorded uses. It is closely followed by ‘admin’, and ‘12345678’ with more than 8 million uses. Rounding out the global top 10 are ‘password’, ‘Aa123456’, ‘1234567890’, ‘Pass@123’, and ‘admin123’. According to the Basque cybersecurity center ZIUR, which works for the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, the ten most popular passwords in the entire world fall in seconds. Security gaps. The National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) managed in 2025 a total of 122,223 cybersecurity incidents in Spain, which represents an increase of 26% compared to the previous year. Of those, nearly 46,000 were cases of online fraud, and phishing led that category with more than 25,000 cases. Why a weak password is so dangerous. The most common attacks require no ingenuity or effort. Brute force programs They try thousands of combinations per second in an automated way, always starting with the most common ones. If your password is on any list of common passwords (and there are some in the public domain), you are practically unprotected. “It is not necessary to change passwords periodically for no reason, but it is necessary to do so in case of any suspicion of compromise or after a security breach. A long and different password on each important site, saved in a manager and with double verification activated in the email and the bank, for example, protects an average user against the vast majority of common threats” counted María Penilla, director of ZIUR. What makes a password really secure. It’s not about arbitrary complexity, but about length and unpredictability. Our recommendation: that it be at least 12 characters, combining upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Keep in mind that a long, random phrase is harder to decipher than a short word with a number at the end. Length protects more than complexity. That you can do if your password is on the list. Three steps in order of urgency: change it now in all the services where you use it, starting with email and your bank app. Reusing the same key on multiple sites multiplies the risk, because if your data is stolen on one platform, attackers will try that same combination on all the others. Activate two-step verification (2FA) where possible. Is the most effective measure to block unauthorized access even when someone knows your password. Use a password manager. There is no human way to memorize dozens of long and different keys without help. From Xataka we have recommended a fewsuch as NordPass, 1Password, KeePass, Bitwarden and many others. Some are paid, others are free, and others are free on one device but charge if you want to use the app on multiple devices at the same time. Change your password when there are breaches. When you suspect that someone may know it, when the service where you use it suffers a security breach, or after a long time using it on sensitive sites, the best thing you can do is change it without detours. And if you want to check if your password has been compromised on any service, you can always use tools like HaveIBeenPwned and the like. Cover image | Sasun Bughdaryan In Xataka | The European Central Bank has taken a look at Mythos and made a decision: prepare for the worst-case scenario

In the war of humanoid robots, those from the United States dance and those from China work by the piece. It is not a technological issue

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The United States and China are fighting a technological battle with two very clear strategies: one visible and the other invisible. The invisible is that of the artificial intelligence, the fight between models and the basic technological development. The visible one is the creation of data centersthe development of next generation networks and robotics. Because it is the robots that are at the center of that technological race between the two powersbut while one country shows them jumping, the other is making them work. The difference is not technology or money: it is state support. However, as with so many things, there is a trick to it. Priority. China has put robotics at the center of its technological development program for the coming years. The new Five-Year Plan, the roadmap in which the country points out the objectives that it will try to achieve over the next five years, robotics is in a privileged place next to the development of the chip ecosystem or the 6G networks. This is a state issue, a national priority that marks a deliberate shift from assembly line robotics, the ‘simple robots’ of traditional automation, to one with built-in artificial intelligence and a greater range of functions they can perform. Humanoid robotics is not new and, in fact, Boston Dynamics is the company that has been demonstrating its products for years. But while the demonstrations by American companies consisted of making their vehicles dance or do somersaults, humanoid robotsChina has been showing them at sporting events and in impressive showsbut it is also putting them in front of stores. to work. There are already stores in Beijing that are operated by humanoid robots. They are independent, serve users and do not need human supervision (unless they are like this japanese robot). They are also turning them into guides in museums and stores, but beyond that public-facing work, there are important groups that are incorporating humanoid robotics into their workforce. An example is CATL. The electric vehicle battery giant began deploy humanoid robots at its Zhengzhou plant. Their task is one considered high risk for human workers: connecting high-voltage battery plugs on an assembly line. The robots are made by a startup called Spirit AI and feature a vision-language-action AI model. According to the company, they are having 99% success in connections, they triple the work that a human can do and, obviously, they do not need breaks. But it is not only private companies that are deploying this technology. The State Electricity Grid Corporation has intended 6.8 billion yuan, about 1 billion euros, to acquire 8,500 robots with AI. The intention is to deploy them in 26 regions to inspect and maintain power lines. It has a trick. Returning to the comparison with the United States, there is something that stands out: the valuation of the companies. While Chinese powers like Linkerbot are valued at 6,000 million dollars, the American Figure is valued in 39,000 million. The key is that Figure has shipped far fewer units to the market, something largely dominated by Chinese companies. Analysts expect both countries to develop markets of similar size, but China currently leads by far in the early commercialization of humanoid robots. Now, not all the mountain is oregano and, in the last report of the International Federation of Robotics highlights that, although China is dominating the deployment of robots globally (humanoids and non-humanoids), the mass market will still take several years to arrive. According to that document, there are more than 150 humanoid robot developers currently operating in the Chinese market, a market that will represent in 2025 more than 85% of the 15,000 humanoid robot installations worldwide. USA represents 13%. However, what the IFR also says is that much of that deployment remains limited to demonstrations or pilot projects, not a replacement as such for the human workforce. That is to say, there are companies that are already using robots on a large scale (the examples of CATL and the State itself), but within the figures that are used to talk about this Chinese dominance also include those pilot programs or robots that are dedicated to playing sports and dancing, as in the United States. Need. In any case, there is something undeniable: China is betting very hard and very quickly on robotics, be it humanoid or that of the ‘robodogs’ that are already using in military forces or in divisions of firefighters. And the reason is that the country is facing a precipice: that of the demographic pyramid. The accelerated aging of its workforce, together with new generations that are not willing to work for a decent wage, are accelerating the implementation of robots to improve productivity and efficiency in various sectors. China is not the only one. Japan is also experiencing with robotics in day-to-day jobs because it faces the same problem of population aging. And Samsung, part of a South Korea that is also experiencing a demographic crisis, has already indicated that it has a great plan underway to automate its factories with humanoid robots controlled by a central AI. In Xataka | In China they are not satisfied with creating advanced robots: a company has developed a head that gestures like a human

The oldest train line in Spain is still running 180 years later. And it moves 40 million passengers

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It is very likely that you have also done the exercise but I don’t know if the subject fascinates you as much as it does me. Have you ever thought about how far and how close we are from our great-grandparents and our great-great-grandparents? The City of Wonders by Eduardo Mendoza explains wonderfully how Barcelona became a technological centrifuge at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. When Onofre Bouvila arrives in Barcelona, ​​the city is very different from the one in front of him when the book ends. A little before what the book tells, Barcelona had already begun to assimilate some technological advances that would be difficult for the average citizen to conceive. One of them was the railway. In 1848, the first train line on the Peninsula was inaugurated in Barcelona.. It’s Barcelona-Mataró. 30 kilometers in half an hour And, indeed, the Barcelona-Mataró is not the first Spanish train line but it is the first on the Iberian Peninsula. Actually, the first train line in Spain is the one known as Havana-Güines Since on November 19, 1837, the first service between these two towns was launched. The objective was to transport the sugar and honey that was produced in the first of these towns from Güines to the port of Havana. However, the first train on the Iberian Peninsula I would have to wait another decade. It was not until October 28, 1848 when the first train from Barcelona left towards Mataró surrounded by the music of the Artillery Corps and the curious who came to Doctor Aiguader Avenue. They explain in The Vanguard that the commotion was considerable to the south of the Parque de la Ciudadela and next to what is now the Estación de Francia, because the atmosphere vibrated with the excitement of witnessing a historical event in our country. The train had 24 cars and had capacity for 900 people. They had almost 30 kilometers ahead of them, which when the service was transformed into a regular line could be covered in 35 minutes without stops and an hour of travel if it stopped at intermediate stops, leaving far behind the five or six hours that had to be spent if traveling by stagecoach. The smoke, coal and soot did not deter those who, according to the Catalan newspaper, sneaked onto the train to be part of that first cap journey. Before, a few lucky They had already had the opportunity to travel between the two cities by train. And a few weeks before the big day, two rehearsals were carried out to check that everything was perfect and worked as it should. It was the result of the work of Miguel Biada. Miguel Biada i Buñol He was a merchant mariner who became a promoter of the first train line on peninsular soil. Although he was born in Mataró, he earned his living as a merchant in the Caribbean where, already in Havana, he had been part of the group of businessmen who promoted and carried out the first Spanish train line, the aforementioned Havana-Güines. Back in Spain, the businessman pushed to push ahead with that first train line that, according to some researchwas projected on the international gauge. These sources suggest that Madrid was required to opt for what It would later be known as Ancho Ibérico. A decision that condemned Spain to be isolated from the European railway network and that It still has its consequences today.. Finally, as we said, the first train line in mainland Spain started in 1848 and became a complete success. In the first year, 675,828 passengers boarded the train among whom, unfortunately, was not its promoter who had died that same year in April. Nor did the five people who, they say, have any good luck. The Vanguardwere run over and killed that first year. These deaths did not put a stop to the expansion plans. And the railway had come to stay in the Iberian Peninsula. It did so decades behind other European countries, but the expansion was so rapid that In 1866 Spain had already accumulated more than 5,000 kilometers of roads. Today, the Barcelona-Mataró has extended to the Massanet-Massanas station and is more than 70 kilometers long. Obviously, it is the first Rodalies line in Barcelona, ​​the one known as R1 that today starts from Molins de Rei and moves almost 40 million passengers a year. Photo | Illustration and photography collected on Wikimedia In Xataka | The Madrid Cercanías have become a nest of problems and delays: their solution is new “megatrains”

AI promised to decentralize knowledge. It’s doing exactly the opposite.

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The entire AI debate revolves around the same thing: employment, deepfakes, copyright, automation. They are reasonable questions. But there is one that matters on a higher level: who controls what the AI ​​considers to be the truth? Because AI, which seemed like the great decentralizer, is actually the most centralizing technology since the printing press. The backdrop. When the printing press arrived, Protestant reformers saw it as the end of the papal monopoly on knowledge: if anyone could read the Bible, the pope lost his authority. And they were partly right. But the printing press also standardized English as the dominant language, liquidated regional dialects and, in the process, made the modern State possible: without cheap and reproducible text there are no uniform laws or large-scale tax collection. What seemed like a liberation was also a centralization. Only it took us two centuries to realize it. Between the lines. With AI the process goes much faster. When Google shows a response from Gemini in AI Overviewshalf of the users it doesn’t click on anything anymore and 26% close the search directly. Searches without clicks have gone from 54% to 72%. The open web, with all its diversity and chaos, is losing users to a single synthesized answer, such as journalist Jerusalem Demsas has analyzed in The Argument. And that response is not neutral. The LLMs They train mainly with large Anglophone newspapers, Wikipedia and academic texts. Local or minority sources hardly exist in the corpus. And during fine-tuning the models are calibrated to align with expert consensus and avoid awkward positions. It is not a mirror of human diversity but a photo of what appears at the center of it. Yes, but. It can be argued that users can ask the AI ​​to defend any position and that diversity is in use if not in production. It is an argument that has some reason. But the printing press also produced very varied content, what was centralized was who set the standards. Here the standards are set by a corpus Made in Silicon Valley for Western chatbots. The case of Grok It is quite illustrative. When Musk tried to move the model away from the progressive consensus, the system began generating anti-Semitic content within days. He had to turn back. The values ​​of an LLM are not in a superficial layer that can be retouched, they are stuck in the corpus from the beginning. The big question. ChatGPT is getting closer to the billion weekly users. Elite models are developed by a few companies: OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, mainly. We can add xAI. What comes next comes from China: DeepSeek, Moonshot, Alibaba… The researchers of these elite models, to a large extent, have studied in the same places, have worked in the same offices and share, in general terms, the same cultural references. The risk of this decentralization is not that AI lies more than Google. The risk is that when AI makes mistakes, it does so towards the center, not towards conspiracism. The risk is that this center is being set, without anyone having decided, by a few people in San Francisco. In Xataka | As far as we know, the agency that supervises AI in Spain is not supervising anything. What it does have is an Ideas Laboratory Featured image | Xataka

You can still get it for less than 1.80 euros per month

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If we take a look at the list of best vpnwe have a good bouquet of options. How can we choose just one? If what you are looking for is a VPN that you can install on all your devices and that also be very cheapthen maybe the right one for you is Surfshark: it’s on sale right now and it’s only 1.78 euros. Of course, only until next May 11. Surfshark Starter Subscription – monthly The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A promo that only has a couple of days left Yeah, There are VPNs that are totally free. These, for a specific moment when we have no choice, can save us from a pinch. The problem with these is twofold: They are not as safe as they promise to be. and, furthermore, they tend to make us browse the Internet slowly. All this is eliminated from the equation by betting on a good VPN and that’s just where Surfshark comes in. This VPN stands out, as we have said above, because can be installed on all your devices with a single account. This way, you can carry this tool on your cell phone, tablet or cell phone and use it without having to do anything strange. In addition, its application is very simple and, as Surfshark offers more than 4,500 servers, we will always have connection options. Let’s see how the Surfshark promo works. As we explained above, right now their cheapest plan (which includes VPN and a tool called ‘Alternative ID’) is priced at 1.78 euros if we bet on his two-year plan. If we do a quick calculation, that means that it will cost us a total of 48.06 euros. Besides, Surfshark gives us three extra monthsso we will have 27 months of VPN at a very attractive price. What if you are looking for a little more security in your equipment? Then, you might be interested in making the jump to this VPN’s next plan, called Surfshark One. This, in addition to a VPN, includes an antivirus, an ad blocker and even a system that notifies you if your data has been leaked on the Internet. And its price is not much higher: it costs 2.08 euros per month in its two-year modality (so we will pay 56.16 euros in total for 27 months). And to finish, it remains Surfshark One+. It is an improved version of the previous one that, in addition to everything it includes, comes with a tool called ‘Incogni’ that allows us to delete our data from different databases. Its price is 4.18 euros per month, so in total it would be 112.86 euros in the two-year modality (which also includes 3 extra months). 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 | surfshark In Xataka | Why it is dangerous to connect to public Wi-Fi and what you should do to protect yourself In Xataka | Best VPNs 2026: guide with the 17 best services to protect your online privacy

It’s bad news for Google

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If the question is which AI makes better images, the general answer would be Google’s Nano Banana 2. And if we talk about preparing reports rigorously, we would probably say that Claude is the one who takes the lead. But in the AI ​​race, just as important as being the best is appearing to be the best. And above all, make money with your model. And if the arrival of artificial intelligence to the labor market has felt like an earthquake in the shape of more or less related layoffs, barriers to entry to junior profiles and have to work more Against all odds, the reality is that in recent months the scenario of which AI is the favorite of companies has taken a turn. Visual Capitalist has published a graph that monitors month by month from January 2023 to March 2026 what percentage of US companies pay for each provider’s models. To prepare it, they used anonymized spending data from more than 50,000 companies on the platform. ramptaking only paid subscriptions, so free use is left out. The result is a clear picture of consolidation: the market is shrinking towards very few players at breakneck speed. The graph marks a clear winner from the start: OpenAI is the most widespread payment AI provider among US companies, reaching a share of 35.2% in March of this year. Just behind is Anthropic with a share of 30.6%. You have to look down a lot to find the others: Google, xAI and the rest of the providers are below 5%. But the most important thing when looking at the photo is not who the leader is but the trend: Anthropic’s is a meteoric rise. What AI model are companies paying for? The market closes and It only has room for two: OpenAI and Anthropic together account for nearly 66% of the AI ​​business payment market in the United States, meaning that two out of every three dollars that companies spend on AI models go to these two companies. The rest share the crumbs. This type of concentration is the fish that bites its tail: leading companies have more customers, more usage data and more resources to improve their products, so their pursuers have it increasingly difficult, although it is true that Google has muscle for a while. What AI models are companies paying for? Visual Capitalist with Ramp data January 2025 is a key date in the graph: OpenAI was present in 16.8% of companies and Anthropic barely had 4.1%, slightly below Google’s 4.2% share. In 14 months Anthropic has multiplied its presence sevenfold, while OpenAI has doubled it and Google has 4.3%. The takeoff coincides with the launch of Claude Code in February 2025, its scheduling assistant that became general availability in May of that year, and accelerates with the arrival of Cowork in January 2026, its workflow platform. That Claude be a rocket The graph has several explanations. Yes, it’s a good AI model, but Anthropic has been able to build concrete tools around that model that companies use every day and that make it difficult to switch vendors. According to Sacra estimatesas of October 2025, Anthropic had more than 300,000 business clients that represented approximately 80% of its revenue, which shows that those at Amodei were clear about their strategy from the beginning: their niche is the company and not so much the ordinary user. Google has been oscillating between 3 and 4.5% in business share for three years, a marginal advance compared to the budding duopoly and the investment made. Elon Musk’s xAI has gone from zero to 1.9% in March 2026, which means appearing on the map, but still very far from the competition. But the case of Google is the one that truly baffles: It has cutting-edge technology, one of the most powerful cloud infrastructures in the world and access to an amount of data like never before, but it doesn’t get companies to open their wallets. Everything indicates that the problem is in how it has packaged its products: dispersed among too many brands and platforms, which creates real confusion for the business customer. In Xataka | If the question is which of the big tech companies is winning the AI ​​race, the answer is: none In Xataka | The US’s problem in the AI ​​and humanoid race is not China: it is all of Asia and it is greatly disadvantaged Cover | Visual Capitalist

Spain still has dozens of reservoirs that cannot be used because literally no one has laid pipes

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It was inaugurated in 2015, cost 57 million euros and has a capacity for 30 hm3 of water, but the Siles dam in Jaén hasn’t been used for a decade because no one has made the necessary pipelines to irrigate the Sierra del Segura. It is not an isolated case. An example. The Rules dam was inaugurated a little earlier: in 2004. At the end of 2025, while the province of Granada was at 29% of its capacity, the Vélez de Benaudalla reservoir was close to 70%. The secret is the same: going 20 years without pipes that allow us to use water. These are flagrant cases, but there are many more (and for the most varied reasons): Alcolea in Huelva, Mularroya in Zaragoza, Castrovido in Burgos… Is there anything more Spanish than making reservoirs and taking years—or decades—to build the pipelines that make them useful? The house on the roof. In a country like Spain, each useless cubic hectometer is not only de facto lost water, it is also a tremendous ecological damage inflicted on river channels for no reason. And, if that were not enough, it is economic nonsense. It makes no sense to mobilize all the resources necessary to launch a reservoir and then leave it forgotten. Above all, because (whether we like it or not) we live in an agricultural giant that needs water security that we cannot guarantee. The opportunity cost of delaying the pipelines necessary to launch these reservoirs impacts the economic and employment development of entire regions. A Spanish problem? To tell the truth, we cannot say that it is a purely Spanish problem either. Portugal, France or Italy have had similar problems. What happens in Spain is that there is an enormous fragmentation of powers that means that, when any problem appears, everything comes to a standstill. In our case, the central State designs and finances the main dams and key sections. However, it is the autonomous communities, the hydrographic confederations or the municipalities that they must run the secondary networks. And in determining what is the main or secondary tranche (and who should pay the bill) most problems arise. But not the only ones. And it is that, as the processes become eternallicenses expire, works are not awarded, litigation drags on, environmental requirements become stricter and solving the problem becomes impossible. In the end, the dams are what is striking (what is politically profitable). The “last mile” (that whole set of pumping stations, pipelines and treatment plants) is much less striking, as crucial as it is. When problems become entrenched, there are no good solutions and administrations prefer to put the issue aside rather than make decisions. The country of a thousand preys. Because yes, it is true: Spain has many damsbut dozens of them remain vats of water with no use. And as much as the causes are clear, it is still striking that not even water crises like those of recent years manage to solve this. Image | Red Zeppelin In Xataka | “In the next ten years, Spain and Latin America are going to suffer (a lot) with water,” Robert Glennon (University of Arizona) A version of this theme was published in 2025

Steve Jobs’ widow is squandering the fortune she inherited. You have good reasons to do so.

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Laurene Powell Jobs was already a brilliant business woman with a promising future before she met, almost by chance, the person who would be her life partner for the next 22 years. As chance would have it, one day he arrived late to a conference in 1989 and sat next to the main speaker: Steve Jobs. What happened from that moment on is part of the history of technology. After the death of jobsLaurene inherited much of the Apple founder’s fortune, which she only had to share with Steve’s first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Lisa, in addition to giving the name to the failed Apple projectwas the result of Jobs’ relationship at age 23. Most of Laurene’s inheritance was Jobs’ shareholding in Apple and Disney. In 2011, these shares were valued at around 10 billion dollarsbut Jobs’ widow was very clear about what she was going to do with that money: “I am not interested in building on the legacy of an inheritance and my children know it. Steve was not interested in that. If I live long enough, that inheritance will end with me.” The latest movements of Laurene Powell Jobs indicate that Jobs’ widow will keep her word and spend the entire fortune she inherited as Steve would have liked: dedicating herself to philanthropy until her death. Goal: donate $3.5 billion over the next 10 years Just like MacKenzie Scottex-wife of Jeff Bezos, Laurene Powell Jobs did not want to join her multimillion-dollar charity project to the The Giving Pledge Philanthropic Clubled by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. He has preferred to go it alone and spend his entire fortune on his own philanthropic projects that improve people’s lives and reduce the impact of climate change. Graduated in political science and with a master’s degree in business from Stanford, the millionaire widow She is not a novice managing funds.. In addition to creating his own healthy eating company, Powell Jobs has been able to make impact investments which have allowed it to support social and environmental projects without its fortune being significantly reduced. The value of Disney and Apple shares has increased tenfold in the last decade, however, Laurene’s current fortune is estimated at around $14 billion. That gives an idea of ​​the volume of donations he has made in recent years. Since the death of Steve Jobs, Laurene has created two charitable foundations on which she concentrates all her philanthropic efforts. The first is Emerson Collective which focuses on educational projects that seek to offer equal educational opportunities for groups at risk of exclusion. The second pillar of your charitable project is Waverley Street Foundationan international initiative aimed at protecting the groups most vulnerable to climate change, supporting education, health and preservation projects of natural spaces so that people can survive in the communities where they were born. Jobs’ widow’s project is invest 3.5 billion dollars in the next 10 years in this latest project. “I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t mind accumulating it. I do this in honor of his work and have dedicated my life to doing everything I can to distribute it effectively, helping people and communities sustainably.” This investment objective is far from 10 billion dollars that Jeff Bezos proposed to investthe $45 billion from Mark Zuckerbergthe most 160 billion from Warren Buffet or the 90% of Bill Gates’ fortune. Laurene’s philanthropic spirit and discretion does not prevent the widow from enjoying her fortune visiting Mallorca on the Venusa family yacht designed in 2009 by Jobs himself, valued at 120 million dollars. Jobs’ fortune does not concern the couple’s three children either, since all of them already have established careers outside the media spotlight. Reed Paul relegated his father’s last name to the background to pursue a degree in oncology at Stanford University. Erin Siena is an architect and designer. Eve Jobs has a degree in Science, Technology and Society from Stanford, although she currently makes her living as model on the main catwalks. In Xataka | “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”: Steve Jobs’ technique that used emotional intelligence when no one was talking about it In Xataka | It’s not Steve Jobs, it’s Mustafa Suleyman: Microsoft’s AI CEO who joins the trend of dressing “Jobs style” Image | Flickr (TechCrunch)

China generated half of the digital viewing of the last World Cup. There is one month left until 2026 and it is still not clear if they will issue it

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Less than five weeks before the whistle that will kick off the opening match of this year’s World Cup, FIFA has signed broadcast contracts with more than 175 countries. China and India, with almost three billion inhabitants, are not among them. It is the unpleasant fruit of a price war over broadcast rights that pits the largest football organization in the world against the two most populated markets on the planet. What is at stake. The mbiggest World Cup in historywhich is said soon: 48 teams, 104 matches to be played in USACanada and Mexico between June 11 and July 19. FIFA is selling it as the most watched and broadcast event of all time. If they manage to resolve the conflicts with the two countries with the largest number of inhabitants on the planet, of course. According to data from FIFA itselfChina generated 49.8% of all viewing hours on digital and social platforms during the Qatar 2022 World Cup. Half of global digital consumption. More: India added 32 million digital viewers in the final alone. They are two very important markets that should not be ignored. Why is this happening? Part of the explanation is in the schedules. The tournament is held in North America, which means that the highest-rated matches will start at 3:00 a.m. in Beijing and Shanghai, and at 12:30 a.m. in New Delhi. These are schedules that destroy the advertising market: there is not enough audience beyond the fans, and advertisers are reluctant to pay the very high rates for the events. And without substantial advertising revenue, networks cannot support the tens of millions of dollars that broadcasts cost. India: bidding war. JioStar, India’s largest media conglomerate (the result of the merger between Viacom18 and Disney Star), even offered $20 million for the rights. And FIFA rejected the offer: it wanted 100 million dollars for a package that would also include the rights to the 2030 World Cup. According to local mediaFIFA would have lowered its price to around 35 million, although the negotiation is still not closed. China: crazy prices. ApparentlyFIFA would have demanded between 250 and 300 million dollars for the rights in the Chinese market, a figure that CCTV (the only broadcaster authorized by law to negotiate these rights) would not be willing to even remotely match. Its budget is around 60-80 million dollars, according to the same sources. FIFA may be willing to go down to between 120 and 150 million, but it is still double what CCTV wants to pay. On social networks, fans protest the difference in numbers between China and India. They are their traditions and they must be respected. CCTV has broadcast the World Cup without missing a single edition since Argentina 1978. Previously, agreements were closed with enough notice to launch promotional campaigns and attract sponsors, but this time there is no agreement, and the tournament starts in five weeks. For example, In the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, CCTV had the rights closed months in advance. And to this is added an extra problem: journalists from the country have had difficulties obtaining visas to cover the World Cup, which would reduce the quality of the broadcasts and, consequently, weaken the attractiveness for Chinese sponsors (which, as is easy to imagine, are among the main sponsors of the tournament). High tension. What we have right now are two millionaire forces pulling the rope in different directions: both want the highest profitability, knowing that time is an absolutely essential variable, because each week without a signed deal is equivalent to advertising and sponsorships that disappear. Not to mention the exasperation of millions of fans, who are now turning Asia into a sea of ​​nail-biting fans. And not in the penalty shootout, precisely. In Xataka | You will only be able to get to the World Cup stadiums in the USA and Mexico by car. And they are going to charge you 300 dollars to park it

an artificial island with a wood and stone structure older than Stonehenge

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In several rural areas of Scotland there has been an old tradition for centuries: when the level of some lakes drops after periods of drought or storms, strange rows of stones and dark wood sometimes appear briefly, the neighbors call “the traces of the ancients.” For a long time they were thought to be simply natural remains… until archaeologists discovered that many actually belonged to hidden human constructions underwater for thousands of years. The artificial island hidden under the waters of Scotland. At the beginning of May something unusual happened in Scotland: a small artificial island built some time ago reappeared more than five thousand years with wood, branches and stone, even before Stonehenge. What today seems like just a rocky islet lost in a lake on the Isle of Lewis hid under water a complex human structure built during the Neolithica time when British communities were still taking their first steps towards large collective projects. He find It not only forces us to reconsider the antiquity of the so-called Scottish “crannogs”, but also the organizational capacity of societies that were already capable of completely transforming an aquatic landscape thousands of years before the most famous large megalithic constructions in Europe. A wooden platform from before the pyramids. Apparently, archaeologists discovered that the islet of Loch Bhorgastail originally began as a huge circular wooden platform about 23 meters in diameter covered with layers of branches and vegetation. As the centuries passed, different generations expanded and reinforced the structure by adding new layers of stone and brushwood until transforming it into the small island visible today. The dating places the first phase of construction between 3800 and 3300 BCthat is, several centuries before the best known phases of Stonehenge and a lot before the pyramids Egyptians. The investigation It also demonstrates that those Neolithic communities not only built funerary monuments or stone circles, but were also capable of modifying entire lakes to build artificial spaces isolated from the continent. The wooden platform of the crannog, below the waterline Under the water a lost stone path appeared. One of the most striking discoveries was the location of a stone road submerged bridge that connected the island to the shore of the lake. Today it remains hidden underwater, but in the past it provided easy access to the artificial platform before lake levels and the natural environment changed. Researchers believe that this access demonstrates that the island was not a simple symbolic structure lost in the middle of the water, but a regularly used place by entire communities. The fact that the construction was modified and reused for thousands of years (from the Neolithic to the Iron Age) further indicates that the place maintained special importance for entire generations. Fragments of a Neolithic pot found near the crannog Remains of banquets and meetings. Not only that. Hundreds of fragments appeared around the island neolithic ceramic belonging to bowls and vessels, many of them still retaining remains of food adhered to the interior surfaces. Archaeologists believe that this points to activities related communitys with meetings, food preparation and possible ritual banquets. The enormous amount of work required to build an artificial island in the middle of a lake also suggests the existence of societies much more organized than is normally imagined for that time. They were not small improvised groups surviving in isolation, but communities capable of coordinating labor, resources and planning over long periods of time. Aerial view of the Loch Bhorgastail crannog, illustrating the site context and the land-water interface where integrated terrestrial and underwater survey methods are applied Another way to explore the past underwater. Much of the progress has been possible thanks to a new technique developed specifically to study very shallow water areas, an especially problematic environment for archeology because terrestrial and underwater methods often fail precisely in that intermediate zone. The researchers combined drones, waterproof cameras and stereophotogrammetry systems capable of generating continuous three-dimensional models both above and below water. The result has made it possible to digitally reconstruct the entire island and document structures invisible from the surface with centimeter precision. Until now, many of these environments were considered a kind of “blind zone” for archaeology. Scotland could hide hundreds. The Loch Bhorgastail case is especially important because researchers believe that there are hundreds of crannogs spread across the Scottish lochs and many could hide much older origins than previously thought. For decades it was believed that most belonged to the Iron Age or medieval times, but recent discoveries are pushing their origins back thousands of years, until the Neolithic. This opens the possibility that more artificial platforms, submerged paths and remains of human activities at a surprisingly early time in European history remain hidden beneath the calm waters of many Scottish lochs. The island changes the image of British Neolithic societies. The most fascinating of the discovery is that it forces us to abandon the simplified image of Neolithic communities as dispersed and technically limited groups. Building an artificial island of wood and stone in the middle of a lake required planning, knowledge of the aquatic environment, transportation of materials, and large-scale social cooperation. And all this was happening in Scotland ago more than five thousand yearseven before some of the most famous prehistoric monuments on the planet were built. Beneath the dark waters of a seemingly normal lake, a an extraordinary test of the extent to which those ancient societies were much more complex and ambitious than was believed. Image | University of Southampton In Xataka | Some 5,000-year-old tombs went unnoticed for millennia. Until we look from the sky In Xataka | About to close, this remote mine in the Polar Circle has found a 2 billion-year-old yellow diamond that weighs 158 carats

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