Month: January 2026

While all cities are removing their last phone booths, Mexico City is putting them back

by

The 21st century is that of smartphonesInternet, networks, 24/7 365 connectivity, virality and immediacy, a scenario in which telephone booths seem like an almost antediluvian vestige. Spain began to retire them a few years agoalthough many had been out of play for some time, vandalized, converted into little more than billboard posts. After all… Who wants a cabin when most of us walk around with a cell phone in our pockets? In Mexico you have the answer. In fact, the country is so convinced that booths make sense that it is installing hundreds and hundreds in its streets. What has happened? That Mexico is doing something (apparently) extemporaneous in the era of smartphonesInternet, social networks and permanent connectivity: the public company CFE Telecomunicaciones is installing hundreds of telephone booths. The diary Expansion talks about 848distributed mainly in the southeast of the country, in states such as Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas. It’s actually nothing surprising. In February 2024 CFE already announced their plans to “roll out” telephone booths throughout the country. But… Why? Because even though in 2026 the smartphones have become masters and lords of our pockets, not everyone has one, nor does they feel comfortable handling them. With the cabins CFE wants precisely that: to close the “generational or digital gap” in the country and “guarantee the connection” of the entire population. Hence, telephone poles are being installed especially in rural areas after reaching agreements with local authorities. “The project adds an alternative to guarantee the connection of the population who, due to the generational or digital divide, may see their communication with their loved ones affected,” claims the company. The idea, precise The Countryis that the phones can be accessed at no cost and the devices also offer an Internet connection and the possibility of making calls outside of Mexico, to the US or Canada. On your website CFE recalls that the project is carried out with “institutional linkage” and agreements with local administrations. And how many cabins are there? That is one of the most curious details of the initiative. And also those who have given the most talk. Expansion assures that CFE Telecomunicaciones has installed at least 848 booths, especially in the southeast, but the same media recalls that throughout Mexico there are still thousands of the old booths that people went to years ago, before cell phones and WhatsApp radically changed our way of communicating. Are they all the same? According to the Federal Telecommunications Institute, in December there were still 580,199 cabinsa considerable number, although they represent 10.6% less than in 2019. The majority are in the hands of Telmex, although the firm BBG Comunicación is also present in the market. This inheritance has not been without controversy, especially due to the state of some booths. Not long ago the Congress of Mexico City proposed withdrawal and dismantling cabins that are disused, abandoned or obsolete. The reason: from being key pieces for communication, they have become annoying obstacles that hinder pedestrian crossing and generate a bad image. It may seem exaggerated, but according to authorities’ calculationsin the country there are thousands of population centers that still have “public telephony” and most of their facilities “no longer function correctly.” Many of the booths are not removed despite being obsolete because prevents it an agreement from the 90s. Do you all agree? Although the country seems determined To find a way to end the digital divide, not everyone considers that the installation of new booths in rural areas will be the solution. This is what Jorge Bravo, for example, from the Mexican Association of the Right to Information warns (Amedi), who warns that the booths are part of an anachronistic connectivity model. “There are no clear criteria for the installation of these cabins. Although I have observed some in good condition, I have never seen people using the service,” he says. Images | Honorable Municipal Council of Silacayoápam (Facebook) and Mateusz D (Unsplash) In Xataka | Americans have been devouring pizza for generations. Now they are changing them for something else: Mexican food

replanting them in the bush is not an option

by

Once the holidays are over, it’s time to take down the tinsel, dismantle the Nativity scene, put away the garlands, lights, hanging Santa Clauses and other Christmas decorations and ask yourself the same question as every year: Where the hell to store all those decorations? And above all, what do we do with the tree, that fir tree that is more than a meter high that we bought in a nursery back in December and that has spent weeks presiding over our living room loaded with balls and flashing LEDs? In Madrid they have decided to go ahead to that question by making something clear: Christmas trees should not be thrown into any container and of course they cannot be abandoned on the street. It’s not even right take them to the mountains to plant them there, as nice as that sounds. There is another solution. What has happened? That (with permission from Vigo) Christmas is over. And that means that thousands and thousands of Spanish homes are dedicating themselves to the laborious task of dismantling their nativity scenes, taking down tinsel, putting lights, snowman figurines and hanging Santa Clauses in boxes and, above all, dismantling their trees. Those who have opted for artificial fir trees (or they have rented them) will have no problem, but things change in homes with natural trees. What do we do with the tree? The big question. At the end of the day, a tree should not be treated as just another piece of urban waste. This same week the Madrid City Council remembered it with a clear message: “Its abandonment on public roads or its deposit in unauthorized containers has a negative impact on both the environment and the proper management of waste.” Even Ecoembes recognize that the issue raises doubts and encourages transplanting as long as the trees are real, alive, and “possible.” If not, remember that they must be taken to a clean point, just like synthetic ones. Should we replant it then? Not so fast. To prevent people from giving a second life to their trees in the mountains, on Wednesday (just after Kings) the Community of Madrid issued a statement in which he remembers that, no matter how bucolic it may seem, this solution is a bad idea and is prohibited. The reason is simple. As remember the regional government, the usual thing is that at Christmas the houses are decorated with fir trees of the variety Abies albanative to the north of the peninsula. If we dedicate ourselves to replanting them without criteria in other regions, with other ecosystems, we run the risk of ending up damaging the local flora. Is it prohibited? The Community’s warning is very clear. In his note he recalls “the prohibition of replanting Christmas fir trees in natural areas of the region” and cites the Forest Lawamong other state regulations. “As they are species foreign to the environment, they can cause imbalances in ecosystems, be a source of pests or diseases and increase the risk of forest fires.” Instead of looking for a clearing in the mountains to plant our Christmas tree, the regional body encourages us to contact the town councils and use their collection services. The goal: that our fir tree be relocated to an urban park or garden, where it will grow safely without “putting biodiversity at risk.” Click on the image to go to the tweet. What to do in Madrid? In reality, Madrid residents have it very easy. On the same day that the Community warned of the prohibition of planting fir trees in the mountains of the region, the City Council of the capital announced his campaign Christmas tree collection. During the remainder of January, families who want to get rid of their fir tree will be able to deposit it at two points: one is in the El Retiro Stove Nurserythe other in the Country House Nursery. Whoever wants to use the service will find them open every day, morning and afternoon. Are there conditions? Yes. The campaign is not designed for any type of tree. The idea is for Madrid residents to deliver their fir trees alive, with a cohesive and moist root ball. In fact, the technicians will not collect dry specimens, with loose branches or those in which the root ball is so broken or without roots that it is impossible to recover it. In case there was any doubt, the Consistory clarifies that the collection points are for natural trees, not plastic. “This initiative aims to promote responsible habits among citizens, especially during periods of high consumption such as the Christmas holidays, as well as reinforce the culture of recycling and respect for the environment once the celebrations are over,” duck the organism. Is it something new? No. Last year the City Council already launched a similar campaign during which it collected 597 fir trees after the holidays. Of them, 168 were saved, 28.1%. The idea is that those lucky specimens, which arrive in a condition good enough for gardeners to care for, end up being replanted in green spaces. When choosing a location, the technicians take into account that they are not native species so as not to damage the environment. Trees in poor condition suffer a different fate. The City Council staff takes them to the Mijas Calientes Plant Waste Transformation Plant to subject them to a composting process and create an organic fertilizer that is later used in the parks, gardens and other green areas of the capital. The idea, the City Council clarifies, is to “close the cycle of use of plant waste.” In the last campaign (2024-2025) that was the fate of 429 fir trees. Typically, 25 to 30% of the collected fir trees are recovered. Images | Madrid City Council and Frames For Your Heart (Unsplash) In Xataka | In Spain, homes have changed so much that at Christmas they no longer think about gifts for family members. They buy them for dogs

Getting them out of there is an engineering nightmare.

by

The geopolitics of the 21st century has found its new epicenter (again) in a white wasteland of 2.2 million square kilometers. After the recent military operation in Venezuela which culminated in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump has reactivated with unprecedented aggressiveness his most persistent ambition: to convert Greenland into American territory. But while the White House sells the island as a “bullion” of strategic resources, experts warn that the reality under the ice is an engineering nightmare that could break not only Washington’s coffers, but Western security architecture itself. The myth of immediate wealth. The central argument of the Trump administration is mineral wealth. The island is estimated to be home to between 36 and 42 million tonnes of rare earth oxides. However, as Anjana Ahuja relates in his column for the Financial Timesthe fascination with these minerals is not new. Already in the 19th century, mineralogist Karl Ludwig Giesecke cataloged treasures such as cryolite, the “white gold” of the industrial era. However, the technical reality is devastating. Anthony Marchese, president of Texas Mineral Resources, explains in Fortune that “if you go to Greenland for its minerals, you’re talking about billions of dollars and an extremely long time.” The problem is not scarcity, but physical accessibility since it does not have infrastructure that connects settlements, the electrical grid cannot support large-scale mining and, in the north of the island, the climate only allows work six months a year. The rest of the time, the machinery must hibernate under extreme conditions. The battle for the underground. Control of rare earths (neodymium, terbium, scandium) is vital for defense technology and the green transition. China controls today about 90% of this market, and the Tanbreez project in southern Greenland is emerging as the great Western alternative. According to industry sourcesthe company plans to start mining in 2027, but processing costs will exceed $1 billion. However, for experts like Javier Blas, energy analyst at Bloombergthis enthusiasm is, to a large extent, a powerpoint optimistic. Blas warns that Greenland’s potential is more part of a collective imagination than an economic reality. “The market has already spoken,” he maintains: if after decades of exploration no major mining company has managed to operate successfullyit is because the concentrations are low and logistics devours any benefit. According to Blas, the island is not a Wonderland of raw materials; It is an economic challenge that has not produced a single barrel of oil despite years of attempts. The China clamp. Here the most controversial factor comes into play: uranium. The Kvanefjeld deposit, one of the largest in the world, is at the center of international arbitration. The Energy Transition Minerals (ETM) company—owned by Chinese capital— claims 11.5 billion dollars to Greenland after the ban on uranium mining for environmental reasons. This legal dispute places the island in a strategic clamp: Washington wants control to expel Beijing, but it is already underground through litigation and business actions. The navigable Arctic. Beyond the mines, the decisive factor It’s climate change. Melting ice is transforming the Arctic into a viable trade corridor. Sailing from Europe to Asia through the north reduces the distance by 40% compared to the Suez Canal. Greenland is not just a reserve of precious stones; It is an unsinkable aircraft carrier at the center of new sea routes. Controlling the island allows the US to apply what some analysts at Fortune They call the “Donroe Doctrine” (a play on words between Trump and the Monroe Doctrine): securing the hemisphere as an exclusive sphere of influence, preempting Russian icebreakers and Chinese logistics investments. The “optical illusion” factor and the human cost. Despite Trump’s promises to “make” Greenlanders rich, local sentiment is one of rejection. Recent polls cited by the New York Timesput the population that opposes being part of the United States at 85%. Although Denmark’s desire for independence is real, Greenlanders do not want to “exchange one master for another.” Additionally, the maintenance cost is astronomical. Denmark subsidizes the island with 600-700 million dollars annually. According to the Financial Times, For the US to replicate the Danish welfare state on the island, the necessary investment would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Alexander Gray, a former member of the National Security Council, admits that “the accounts will never add up” but insists that the strategic value is “incalculable.” ANDbetween ambition and reality. The conflict over Greenland summarizes the transition towards a world where geography once again prevails over international law. For Donald Trump, the island is the ultimate trophy: territory, resources and a coup against the established order. For geologists and energy experts, it is a reminder that political will cannot melt ice or build ports where there is nothing. The Arctic is no longer a remote edge of the map, but the new center of gravity. But while the debate continues in the offices of Washington and Copenhagen, the 57,000 inhabitants of the island watch with suspicion as their home becomes the most coveted piece in a global chess game that is just beginning. Image | Pexels and freepik Xataka | If the question is “what is the next country on the US list” the answer has been on the table for months

Google has decided to touch the heart of Gmail. Gemini aims to transform the inbox into something completely new

by

Email has been there for decades, functioning almost silently, as a basic piece of digital life that we rarely question. We use it for studies, work, registering for services, coordinating our personal life and resolving procedures that continue to pass, to a large extent, through the inbox. Precisely for this reason, the changes in this section are usually minimal and prudent. Gmail has been a good example of that stability for years. Now, Google has decided intervene in a more profound way and do so relying on artificial intelligence. From the Mountain View company, the argument is clear: the problem is no longer just receiving emails, but managing the volume and context that accumulate in the inbox. Gmail was born in 2004 in a very different scenario, and today it coexists with endless threads, cross conversations and an information load that never stops growing. In this framework, the company presents the so-called “Gemini era” as a logical step, a way to turn the inbox into something more than a chronological file and begin to treat it as an active system to understand, prioritize and act on information. Google links a good part of these changes to Gemini 3the model that claims to be behind the new capabilities. Search less, ask more. The traditional logic of email has always been the same: search, filter and read. AI Overviews breaks that sequence by introducing a layer of automatic synthesis. When a thread gets longer, Gmail can generate a summary with the important points, avoiding having to go through message by message. And when what is needed is specific information, the proposal is even more direct: ask the inbox. Gemini interprets the query, reviews the relevant emails and returns a summarized response. Google separates the scope of these features: automatic thread summaries gradually roll out to everyone, while the option to ask inbox questions with AI Overviews is tied to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. Write with help and understand what goes into each plan. Beyond reading email better, Google also wants to make writing it take less effort. Help me write is free and allows you to both polish existing messages and write them from scratch based on a brief indication. Added to that are the new Suggested Replies, which evolve the classic quick replies by taking into account the full context of the thread and the user’s own style. The most advanced layer, Proofread, adds grammar, tone, and style checking, but is reserved for those who subscribe to Google AI Pro and Ultra. According to Google, the rollout begins today in the United States and starts in English, with the promise of expanding languages ​​and regions in the coming months. The new inbox. AI Inbox is the most ambitious bet of this change. Gmail introduces an alternative view that transforms the inbox into a combination of task list and summary of active topics. Artificial intelligence promises to detect pending commitments, payments, appointments or responses and present them as suggested actions, while grouping long conversations together for easy catch-up. The idea is not to replace email, but to reinterpret it, making what is important emerge without the need to manually scroll through messages that, although relevant, are buried by the volume. At the moment, AI Inbox does not come as a function open to everyone. Google is testing it with “trusted testers” in the United States and only through the browser, with priority for personal Gmail accounts and not for Workspace accounts. Furthermore, the proposal still has visible shortcomings: there is no system to mark suggested actions as completed, which limits its usefulness as a task manager. Control in the hands of the user. New features powered by Gemini can be turned on or off, and the classic inbox is still available. However, that control is not completely granular: turning off AI also means you lose other smart features that many users already took for granted. Regarding privacy, Google states that it does not use Gmail emails to train its artificial intelligence models, a key guarantee so that this new layer does not generate distrust in such a sensitive space. This movement makes it clear that Google has decided not to stand still in a field that had been operating for years without profound changes. If this new way of understanding email proves to be useful on a daily basis, it is reasonable to think that other providers will end up following a similar path. In technological careers, not moving or reacting late usually has a cost. But email is also governed by a very different logic: if something works, touching it involves risks. Gmail now enters a real testing phase, where it will be necessary to see if this bet manages to simplify the experience or adds unnecessary complexity. Images | Google In Xataka | Alphabet has just overtaken Apple in the ranking of the most valuable companies in the world. The reason is in AI

A 19th century tactic is blowing up Russian horses

by

The war in Ukraine, presented for months as the great laboratory of 21st century combat dominated by dronessensors and electronic warfare, is entering a deeply contradictory phase in which technologies from the last century and tactics from the 19th century are resurfacing, not due to doctrinal choice but due to material exhaustion. There are really videos explosives. The war that looks back. Ukraine has entered a phase in which the narrative of permanent innovation begins to crack, because along with drones and electronic warfare, technologies and practices that they considered themselves surpassednot as isolated oddities but as structural solutions to a conflict that has become a test of industrial and logistical resistance. The battlefield no longer advances at the pace of available technology, but rather at the pace of resources still in stock, which is pushing armies to rescue weapons, doctrines and methods that belong to other timesadapting them to a radically different environment. Soviet mines. The Soviet anti-tank mine TM-62 has become one of the best examples of this functional regression, not because it is especially sophisticated, but because it combines three key virtues in a war of attrition: power, simplicity and abundance. Designed to destroy armored vehicles from underground, today it is also used as an improvised demolition charge and as aerial ammunition. launched from dronestaking advantage of its enormous explosive charge to compensate for the lack of modern ammunition. The result is an artifact from the sixties that has been found a second life in the most monitored and technical war in history, demonstrating that, when supply fails, creativity relies on what already exists. Image capture from a video shared on social media showing the view from a Ukrainian bomber drone as it drops a TM-62 anti-tank mine on a Russian position The war of attrition. The massive reuse of the TM-62 does not respond to a tactical preference, but to an industrial reality that affects both sidesalthough especially harshly on the Russian side, where producing and sustaining advanced weapons is increasingly expensive. In this context, recycling ammunition inherited from the Soviet arsenal reduces logistical pressure and allows the operational pace to be maintained, even if it is at the cost of saturating the terrain with explosives and accept levels of destruction and danger that turn the front into an increasingly more hostile and uncontrollableboth during the war and in the future. TM-62 When the engines disappear. That same exhaustion explains the return of the animals, one more timeto the Russian front, first as a logistical solution and then as combat toolin a process that is reminiscent of the last stages of great industrial wars of the past. The constant loss of armored vehicles, trucks, motorcycles and light vehicles, together with maintenance and supply problems, has led to replacing engines by animal tractionsomething that is not due to any military romanticism, of course, but rather to the need to move men and material when modern media are no longer available in sufficient quantity. A Russian cavalryman seen through the thermal imaging camera of a drone The return of the cavalry. The most extreme step of this logic has been the reappearance of cavalry chargesan image that seemed banished from the war imagination for some time. more than a century and now it reappears in real videos from the front. Far from being an effective tactic, these charges reflect a desperate improvisationin which an attempt is made to cross areas hit by drones with means that do not generate thermal signatures or depend on fuel, but that lack any protection against an enemy that controls the air almost permanently. Horses like white. Thus, in an environment where any movement is detected from kilometers away, horses have become easy targets for FPV drones, with images showing animals and riders jumping through the air hit by direct explosions, a real bleeding illustrating the brutal clash between 19th century tactics and a battlefield dominated by flying robots. Even when operators attempt to minimize damage to mounts, the reality is that the use of cavalry exposes to animals and soldiers to almost certain death, without providing real tactical advantages. Propaganda distortion. While these scenes are repeated, the Russian media sympathetic to the Kremlin have presented as examples of ingenuity and adaptation, wrapping scarcity in an epic discourse that avoids talking about losses and results. How they explained in Forbesthis narrative does not seek to convince the adversary, but rather to sustain internal morale and hide the fact that resorting to cavalry is not a brilliant innovation, but rather an unmistakable sign that modern resources are running out and that the war is being fought with what is left at hand. Go back in time. Thus, the combination of soviet mines recycled and cavalry charges draws a portrait of an army that, under Putin’s command, has gone from promising high-intensity mechanized warfare to relying on solutions from previous conflicts to the First World War. In fact, we had seen it previously with Soviet-era tanks. It is not a victory-oriented adaptation, but rather the symptom of a progressive degradation in which each step back in time reflects a loss of material capacity, and in which the price is paid by both soldiers and animals dragged into a war that can no longer advance without looking to the past. Image | WarGonzo, X, Vitaly V. Kuzmin In Xataka | First it was Finland, now the US has confirmed it: when the war in Ukraine ends, Russia has a plan for Europe In Xataka | If the question is what a drone from Ukraine is doing 2,000 km from your home, the answer is simple: take the war to the Mediterranean

“you should spend all your time practicing vibe coding”

by

Alexandr Wang is only in his twenties, but under his responsibility he has the greatest minds in AI in his position as head of the Meta AI Lab. In one of his last interventions during the coverage of the Meta Connect event in the TBPN podcastissued a very direct recommendation to adolescents and young people concerned about their future work: “you should spend all your time practicing vibe coding“. The idea behind his statements is that the sooner you begin to familiarize yourself with the new ways of programmingthe more options you will have when AI is involved in almost everything we use. ​Everything will be “vibe coding”. Wang assured in his speech that the work of software engineers had changed a lot in recent years and that, even for someone who had been in the job market for as few years as he had, it’s going to change a lot more in the next five years. The Goal Manager and founder of Scale AI assures that it is no longer so much about being good at programming in Python, C++ or JavaScript, but about learn to converse with the AI ​​models that are already programming in those languages ​​and explain to them precisely and with natural language what you want to achieve, and monitor its results until the result works. According to Wang, the future of programming inevitably involves he Vibe Coding. The best thing is to start now. Wang’s strongest message is aimed directly at teenagers. “If you’re 13, you should spend all your time coding with Vibe Coding. That’s what you should do,” said the young Meta manager. Wang compared the current technological moment with the computer technology boom of the late 70s and early 80s with the flourishing of the computer industry. “When personal computers emerged, those who spent more time with them and grew up with them had a huge advantage in the economy of the future, like the Bill Gates and even the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. I think that moment is happening right now,” stressed the founder of Scale AI. Practice new skills. Wang takes that idea even further when he talks about the dedication necessary for today’s young people to acquire those programming skills for their future work. “If you spend 10,000 hours playing with those tools and discovering how to use them better than others, that will be a big advantage,” encouraged the Meta executive. His criteria are based on his own experience, since at just 19 years old, Wang fundó Scale AI, a company dedicated to labeling content for training AI models and only 25 years old, entered the list of millionaires of Forbes with a fortune valued at more than $1.1 billion. The future of programming. According to Wang in his speech, it is clear to him that AI will not only help with programming, but will also write by itself practically all the code that a person like him has produced in his entire career. However, Wang does not believe that the role of the human engineer will disappear, but rather that it will shift to another point in the process. Your job will be to know what to ask for, how to combine different tools, how to review what the AI ​​produces and how to turn it into real products. That is why he insists so much that children and adolescents get used to this as soon as possible. new way of workingso that the youngest learn to use the Vibe Coding and integrate it naturally into their way of working as we already do today with computers and programming languages. In Xataka | “In a year or two, code editors will not exist”: four programmers explain the vibe coding revolution to us Image | Scale AI

Washing chicken “to clean it” sounds hygienic. Science says it’s a bad idea (and very dangerous)

by

“Chicken should never be washed.” This time, it was Higinio Gómez (one of the most renowned gourmet polleros in Spain) who reopened the debate in an interview in El País. But the issue is recurrent and inexplicably generates very opposing positions: from those convinced that washing chicken is a way to “remove germs or dirt” to those who, rightly, say that it is a terrible idea. But, as Gómez himself would say in his establishment, ‘let’s go in parts’. What’s wrong with the chicken? Let’s start with the most basic: nothing happens to the chicken. The risk linked to ‘washing chicken’ has nothing to do with the chicken itself. It has to do with cross contamination: the bacteria from raw chicken (which would be eliminated during preparation) transfer to the hands, sink, countertops, and various utensils. Often, in fact, when washing chicken we end up putting those bacteria in foods that are ready to eat. The EFSA estimated in billions of euros annually the impact of pollution Campylobacter (a bug especially linked to chicken). Sometimes it’s because you cook it wrong, yes; but often it is due to handling raw food without any type of rigor. What the evidence says. In a now classic observational study by the North American USDA, was discovered that, in fact, what I just explained was what really happened: among those who washed the chicken, 60% contaminated the sink and up to 26% ended up transferring bacteria to the salad. And, in fact, we already have experimental studies that explain the mechanism: beyond the obvious, “washing generates droplets capable of transferring bacteria and increasing environmental pollution” And why do people insist on washing it? That’s a good question with numerous answers: from the cultural and historical heritage (after all, when the chicken was slaughtered at home, washing did make more sense) to a lack of sense of control that ends up turning against us. Let’s be practical: How to avoid cross contamination when cooking chicken? Separate raw chicken from other foods: It is a good idea to keep the chicken raw separated from other foods. This is always true, but especially with all those that are consumed raw (such as fruits and vegetables). Use different utensils: We have talked about it with the cutting boardsbut it is especially effective advice with knives and other utensils. In fact, the recommendation is that, if we do not have several sets of utensils, wash them carefully between uses with hot water and soap. Wash hands and surfaces thoroughly: After handling raw chicken, you should not only wash your hands with soap and hot water for at least 20 seconds; Instead, we should disinfect all surfaces with which it has been in contact. Image | Christian Guillen / Imani In Xataka | Washing raw chicken increases risk of foodborne infection

“Being a gossip” is enough reason for dismissal for the director of a bank branch

by

They say that curiosity killed the cat, and if that curiosity belongs to the director of a CaixaBank office, it is most likely that her position is in danger. As an example of this, the person in charge of an office of that entity in a small town in Gerona who was fired for “gossiping” about the bank details of people in her town. The courts called it fraud and breach of trust. The case reached the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, which confirmed that the disciplinary dismissal It was completely justified. Curiosity killed the cat. As detailed in the sentence issued By the Catalan Superior Court of Justice, in November 2023, CaixaBank detected anomalous accesses to its customer database. The director of the Les Preses (Gerona) office had been accessing clients’ banking information without apparent justification. An internal audit revealed the magnitude of the problem: between November 3, 2022 and December 11, 2023, management had made inquiries about 170 different clients on 210 different days. The most serious thing was the pattern since of those 170 clients consulted, 84 were family members or people in their close circle, and 121 lived in the same town where the director lived. The searches were done mainly by first and last name, something very unusual in banking operations normal in which the user’s ID is used to avoid confusion between users with identical first and last names. The explanations that did not convince anyone. When the audit investigated the accesses, the director tried to justify herself. First he said it was common to review customer accounts at other offices to confirm that cash transfers between users had been completed correctly. He then stated that some customers had asked him for help because they had had access problems from the application of the mobile. But as more information became known, those excuses began to lose foundation. The bank confirmed before the court that the majority of those 170 clients had connected through the mobile application on the same day that the director consulted their accounts, which showed that they did not need its intervention. Without arguments, all he was left with was the truth: she was a gossip. Finally, the worker admitted that she had consulted this data because of “xafardería”, a Catalan term that means simple curiosity or gossip. She acknowledged that she had not done so at the clients’ request nor was she looking for specific information, but rather motivated by curiosity to know the payments and financial movements of her family, friends and neighbors. He also assured that I had not shared that information with nobody. However, this confession was not enough to save him from the consequences: immediate disciplinary dismissal. There was abuse of trust and the TSJC confirmed it. CaixaBank did not hesitate to act when the conclusions of the internal investigation were known. On January 31, 2024, he was notified of his disciplinary dismissal on the grounds that his actions constituted a “very serious breach of contractual good faith, fraud and abuse of trust”, in accordance with the provisions of article 54.2.d) of the Workers’ Statute and article 76.4 of the current Collective Agreement for savings banks and financial entities. The Social Court number 1 of Figueras supported this decision on July 26, 2024. The worker tried to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, but the court rejected all her arguments. The court concluded that “there is no justification” for these consultations and that the conduct “contradicted the code of ethics and the confidentiality regulations that must govern a business as sensitive as banking.” The sentence left no room for doubt, declaring the dismissal proper and definitive. A lesson in trust and responsibility. As and how they stand out in the specialized environment Economist & Juristthis case leaves important lessons about how access to sensitive information in a financial institution is a privilege that carries responsibility. The director had received training on data protection and the code of ethics, so she was fully aware of the rules she was breaking. His position in the office gave him access to private data of hundreds of people, and used that access to sensitive information to satisfy simple curiosity. Due to the recurrence of the consultations, the courts understood that this was not an isolated case, but rather a deliberate pattern of conduct that violated the trust placed in it by the entity and its clients. In Xataka | The EU has once again taken a look at the Spanish labor market and has once again reminded Spain of something: firing is too cheap Image | Unsplash (Rodrigo Rodrigues)

Sydney Sweeney inaugurates the post-woke era of Hollywood

by

Nobody would bet on an erotic thriller starring a maid in 2025, but ‘The Housemaid’ has shown that Hollywood can still surprise when it recovers genres that seemed buried. The film directed by Paul Feig has raised more than 137 million dollars against a modest budget of 35 million, becoming the unexpected success of Christmas. And that success says a lot about the political moment that Hollywood is going through. Immediate success. The success was so overwhelming that Lionsgate confirmed a sequel just 17 days after its releasesomething unheard of in today’s industry. The fascinating thing is that ‘The Maid’ does not invent anything: it unapologetically recovers the recipe of the nineties erotic thriller with its triangle of sex, money and deadly secrets. As Some critics have pointed out the film “proves that dead Hollywood genres still have life” if executed with conviction. For Sydney Sweeney, this triumph is especially significant after the failures of ‘Christy’ and ‘Eden’, which They threatened to derail his career just when he seemed to begin to establish himself as a star. Anatomy of an extinct genus. The erotic thriller was born as a mass phenomenon in 1987, when ‘Fatal Attraction’, with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas, raised more than 320 million dollars and spent eight weeks at number one at the box office. Five years later, ‘Basic Instinct’ raised the stakes with Sharon Stone and again Michael Douglas throwing us some of the most high-voltaic scenes ever seen on screen. It raised 353 million. He secret of the formula It was a mix of noir classic and explicit sex, with luxury mansions, a reformulation of the trope of femme fatale and continuous plot twists. The death of the genre. The fever unleashed an avalanche of more than 700 movies direct to video between 1985 and 2005, while screenwriters like Joe Eszterhas (of ‘Basic Instinct’) became millionaires. At the end of the nineties, the genre collapsed due to market saturation and because The arrival of the Internet democratized access to pornographyeliminating the need to look for eroticism in cinema mainstream. Until now there has been no possibility of resurrection for the genre because the post-cultural cultural changes#MeToo They made the genre’s tropes (dangerous women punished for leading uncontrolled, unconventional and, above all, undomesticated) sexual lives problematic. The (boring) icing on the cake: Hollywood reoriented its films towards family franchises that could be sold in conservative markets like China. Perpetual recycling. The film industry works like a cemetery with revolving doors: genres never completely die, they just hibernate, waiting for their moment. Romantic comedies seemed extinct last decade, victims of Marvel, until Sydney Sweeney herself raised $220 million in 2023 with ‘Anyone But You’. We have seen it before countless times: ‘Django Unchained’ became the the highest grossing western in historyand from those muds these ‘Yellowstone’. The musicals returned with ‘La La Land’ in 2016, and there we have its successor ‘Wicked’ as one of the sensations of the moment. For its part, nostalgia for modest budget horror It has gone from fashion to phenomenon. The cycle of life. And the pattern repeats itself: a genre is born, reaches saturation, collapses due to excess and exhaustion of the formula, disappears for 15 or 25 years, and is resurrected when a new generation rediscovers it without the negative stigma of saturation. The key is about creating hybrids that incorporate contemporary sensibilities into classic DNA, and streaming has accelerated this process, as platforms like Netflix allow experimentation outside the traditional systemwith less financial risk, since it can refer to niches that traditional studies ignore. The post-woke moment. December 2024 marked a turning point when two major publications (The New York Times and The Telegraph) simultaneously declared that Hollywood had entered a “post-woke era.” The NYT article was especially blunt in dismissing the last decade of diverse stories, celebrating that “we no longer have to pretend to like something just because it has the right politics.” The 2025 box office data confirms the diagnosis: the productions that have triumphed at the box office (‘Lilo & Stitch‘, ‘Zootopia 2’, ‘A Minecraft movie‘, ‘Avatar 3‘) are absolutely harmless in that sense. ‘The Assistant’ is a twist that goes even further in this trend. The film recovers archetypes that the era of political correctness had left behind: femme fatale seductive without feminist justification, explicit sexuality without any type of pedagogy, class conflict dressed in the garb of a thriller without a message. There are no characters written to capture demographics, just a dirty story (with no minority representation) about money, power and betrayal. Sweeney’s presence, raised a few months ago as anti-woke icon It’s not exactly coincidental. The lesson of the market. ‘The Housemaid’ confirms that what is old is new again when the public is hungry for something that the industry no longer offers. The female audience (which represents more than 55% of viewers of the film) has shown that there is a demand for sophisticated adult content that is not superheroes or family animation. While ‘Avatar 3’ and ‘Zootopia 2’ dominated with budgets in the hundreds of millions, ‘The Housemaid’ billed 133 million occupying a space without competition. The question that remains is whether we are facing a structural change or simply another passing cycle. Sydney Sweeney accumulates now three consecutive years with at least one commercial success per year (‘Anyone but you’, ‘Immaculata’, ‘The maid’), which suggests that he has found a formula. If ‘The Housemaid’s Secret’, the sequel, generates a viable franchise, it will have managed to revive a dead genre. Hollywood Cemetery, after all, has always been more of a warehouse than a definitive grave. In Xataka | We Spaniards have stopped watching TV, going to the cinema and reading books: the only thing that interests us is going to concerts

They investigate whether it is a case of “Singapore washing”

by

One day before the end of 2025, Meta announced the purchase of Manusthe Singapore-based artificial intelligence startup, for $2.5 billion. With this acquisition, Meta wants to strengthen its position in agentic AI, that is if the agreement comes to fruition. The Chinese authorities have something to say. What is happening. They count in South China Morning Post that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce is going to launch an investigation into the Manus purchase. Although the startup is registered in Singapore, the company developed its products in China, giving Beijing a legal basis to investigate whether moving personnel and technology to Singapore required an export license under Chinese law. Why is it important. The purchase of Manus can be taken as an example for other Chinese startups to follow: develop their product with Chinese talent taking advantage of the more favorable conditions, move the headquarters to Singapore and jump to the West, avoiding Chinese supervision. From China, this is perceived as a drain on talent and technology, as well as an uncomfortable fact: that the United States is a more attractive destination for AI companies. What can happen. At the moment the investigation has only been announced and it is possible that it will remain just that, but if Beijing concludes that Manus needed an export license, it is possible that they will influence the transaction. According to Financial Timesin an extreme case they could even force the parties to abandon the agreement. It doesn’t seem like it will go that far since, from China, Manus is not seen as a critical technology. Neither Meta nor Manus have commented anything on the matter. Manus. The company gained notoriety in March 2025 when it launched its AI agent. At that time the company operated in Beijing and Wuhan, but In July he moved to Singaporelaying off some of the Chinese staff. Their product is an AI agent capable of building web pages, developing apps and carrying out complex tasks, but does not have its own language modelbut works based on Claude and Qwen. Singapore ‘washing’. Manus is not the only company that has played the Singapore card to attract customers from abroad. It is a common practice known as “Singapore washing”although the most normal thing is not to move the entire company, but rather to open a second headquarters. It is a way to avoid possible sanctions and restrictions derived from the deterioration of relations between China and the US, ensuring access to financing and global markets. Image | Manus / Mariia Shalabaieva in Unsplash In Xataka | Some researchers created a company where all employees were AI agents. They didn’t even do a quarter of the work.

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.