Mobile Tech & Gadgets

less than you think

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We’ve seen them in movies, novels, documentaries, and museums, but there’s one detail about Roman slaves that’s often overlooked: their demographics. How many lived in the empire? What “weight” did they have? How many were men and how many were women? What was your life expectancy? How the hell did they end up under the orders of the patricians? A Spanish historian has asked himself these questions applied to Hispania and their conclusions They help debunk myths and recalibrate previous estimates. For example, calculate that at least during the High Empireslaves represented 9% of the Hispanic population. It is just one of his many conclusions. What has happened? That Fernando Blanco Robles has opened an interesting debate with an article published in the january number from the magazine Lucentum. In it he touches on a topic that is often overlooked when talking about the slaves of Rome: their demographics. To be more precise, Blanco draws a population x-ray of slavery in Roman Hispania. It’s an interesting approach because, although we’ve spent decades clarifying how they lived, what did they eat or where the serfs whose lives depended directly and literally on their masters came from, there is an equally interesting question much less explored: How many slaves lived in the Empire? And in the Iberian Peninsula? Why is it important? The researcher himself clarifies it in your article. “It is necessary to deepen the study of demography in Antiquity and particularly as it relates to the Roman era, but it seems equally necessary to include slaves in order to try to demystify demographic assumptions that have been raised.” His is not (far from it) the first work that addresses this issue (complex and thorny), but it does help to clarify certain ideas. After all, not all authors have reached the same conclusions. If you review the bibliography, you will find authors from the 19th century who calculated that 30% of the population of Roman Italy lived in slavery to others, more modern, who believe that it is more correct to speak of between 15 and 25% of the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula. It is still a very high figure (hundreds of thousands of people), but with a notable difference. That last fork (10-20%) is the same as estimated by some authors for the entire Empire. What was happening in Hispania? In your article Blanco focuses the focus on a very specific part of the Roman domains: the Iberian Peninsula. What ‘mark’ did slaves and freedmen have in Hispania? What was its demographic weight? To answer that question (and many others that he addresses throughout his research) the expert relied on data from the Empire and epigraphic sources, ancient inscriptions. Specifically, it identified in the three Hispanic provinces (Baetica, Lusitania and Citerior) 653 private service with 466 registrations. A relevant part of them (230) contained valuable data, such as ages. With all this information, Blanco has drawn some conclusions. “A population of between 3.5 and 4 million has been calculated for Hispania as a plausible figure. Given the territorial extension of its provinces and the intense economic activity of Baetica and western Citerior, we can assume that in total Hispania reached a percentage of slaves similar to that of Egypt,” details the researcherbefore providing the key figure: in total, in the whole of Hispania the ‘dependent’ population (slaves and freedmen) would represent close to 9%. Where does that percentage come from? The study takes as reference “the most plausible calculations” drawn up for Italy, Egypt and the rest of the Empire, in addition to a crucial question: the resources necessary for “supply and support.” With all this data, Blanco proposes a simple calculation. “That would give a slave population of between 200,000 and 400,000, about 300,000-350,000 on average, to which, if we add the number of freedmen which, based on the general provincial average of the Empire, can be calculated at 105,000, it would give us a total of 405,000 dependent population in Hispania.” That is, freedmen and slaves would represent approximately 9% of the population of Hispania. It is a high figure, but it is far from previous estimates that raised the range above 30%. The article He warns in any case that this is only a “hypothetical calculation” for the high imperial era. Are there more conclusions? Yes. And although they must also be handled with caution, they are fascinating. For example, the study of Hispanic epigraphy reveals a “clear disproportion” As far as sexes are concerned: if we base ourselves on that source of information, there were many (many) more male slaves than female slaves. They represented 64%. They, only 36%. These are data in line with those achieved in other parts of the Empire, such as Augusta Livia. And how long did they live? Another very interesting conclusion is the one that tells us about their ages. “The mortality of the group is concentrated in the first three decades of life,” the study points out before qualifying a relevant idea: perhaps the data will shock us in 2026, but they are not far from the general pattern of the Empire. “The average life expectancy can be established at around 30 years of age. These figures coincide with the same ones that have been studied for the free population (…). In conclusion, nothing indicates to us that their life expectancy and average years of life were lower than the rest of the population. Despite their inferior and dependent legal status, the group manifests the same problems in relation to mortality, fertility rate, children per couple and age of marriage.” How was he enslaved? Having clarified how many there were and how long they lived, another question remains: How the hell did someone become a slave? Why did he lose his freedom to see himself subjugated and dependent on another person? There were different scenarios. A person could end up in shackles for being a prisoner of war, through piracy and foreign markets, for being a foundling, … Read more

China’s nuclear renaissance is now visible from space

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Since China detonated its first atomic bomb In the midst of the Cold War, its relationship with nuclear matters has been marked by secrecy, declared prudence and a deep distrust of the great powers. For decades it chose to stay in the background, building capabilities away from the spotlight and speaking little about them. This historical silence is key to understanding why, each time that something moves In that area, the world pays attention. A silent resurgence in the mountains. The story was brought in a special the new york times this weekend through satellite images. In the humid and rugged valleys of Sichuan, far from prying eyes, China is reactivating and expanding a nuclear infrastructure conceived for another era but adapted to a rivalry between superpowers that is intensifying again after the end of the historic pact between Moscow and Washington that we counted recently. Images from space show new bunkers, ramps and industrial complexes with ventilation and thermal dissipation systems that aim to high risk activitiesintegrated into a framework that no longer seems defensive or residual, but rather coherent with an accelerated and planned expansion that has been gaining pace since the end of the last decade. The inheritance of the “Third Line” and its update. These enclaves are not born from nothing, but sink their roots in what was called lto “Third Line”promoted by Mao Zedong to protect the nuclear heart of the country from American or Soviet attacks. For decades, that internal nuclear empire remained in the backgroundreduced and fragmented when global tensions eased. Today, those same facilities seem regain prominencenot as relics, but as modernized nodes that recover their central function in a China that has left behind the doctrine of minimum containment. Zitong in 2022 (top) and 2026 (bottom) Zitong and Pingtong: key pieces. They explained in the Times that the work detected in Zitong suggests advanced testing of high-precision explosives, essential to perfect the implosion that initiates a nuclear reaction, while the Pingtong complex, with its large ventilation chimney and its characteristic architecture, points to the manufacture of metal cores of the warheads, probably plutonium. The structural similarity with foreign facilities specialized in this process, like Los Alamos National Laboratory, reinforces the idea that China is closing the full cycle of design, testing and production of modern nuclear weapons. Intelligence, data and the value of what is not seen. Beyond the visible, the real leap is in the integration of intelligence, geospatial analysis and advanced simulation capabilities. The great laser ignition laboratory in Mianyang allows the behavior of nuclear warheads to be studied without the need for actual detonations, an approach that reduces political and environmental risks while accelerating technical refinement. In this way, each work detected is only a fragment, but together they form a mosaic that reveals a strategy based on accumulating knowledge, validating designs and gaining operational confidence without openly crossing international red lines. A direct challenge to gun control. There has been a lot of talk about these in recent weeks with the end of the New Start treaty. This Chinese acceleration would complicate any attempt to revive global nuclear control agreements after the expiration of that last treaty between the United States and Russia. Washington insists that China must form part of any new framework, but Beijing avoids commitments that limit growth that it considers necessary for its status as a global power. The American accusations of covert tests, rejected by China, add a layer of mistrust that pushes both sides to plan based on worst-case scenarios. Taiwan and the logic of enhanced deterrence. The backdrop to this effort is China’s perception of vulnerability to nuclear coercion American, especially in a plausible crisis over Taiwan. As? A largest arsenaldiverse and technologically tuned offers Beijing the feeling of sufficient immunity to maneuver more freely in a conventional conflictraising calculation risks for all parties. In that sense, what is happening under the mountains of Sichuan is not only an industrial modernization, but rather points more to a strategic bet that redefines the balance and forces the rest of the world to interpret, and the “intimate enemies” to react, if They are not doing it anymore. Image | Planet Labs, Google Earth, Airbus In Xataka | The United States is convinced that China is conducting nuclear tests. The problem is that you can’t prove it. In Xataka | China is building something that looks like an oil well. It is actually a nuclear bunker with a command center

The northern section of L11 is now final

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The Community of Madrid has definitively approved the informative study of the northern section of Metro Line 11, so there is now the green light to continue with one of the most ambitious expansions of the network. The idea is that the new route will have six stations that connect Mar de Cristal with Valdebebas Norte, passing through points such as the Ifema fairgrounds, the Isabel Zendal Nursing Hospital and terminal 4 of the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport. We’ll tell you how everything turns out. Why it is important. Line 11 is the least used of the entire Metro network, so the Administration decided to give it a chance by taking advantage of it to expand it to more areas. The intention with this line is to turn it into a main artery that crosses Madrid from southwest to northeast, connecting areas with high demand for public transport and facilitating access to key venues and infrastructure such as the airport. The project figures. According to account Europa Press, the base tender budget amounts to 599.3 million euros, not including VAT, and with a favorable environmental impact report. The intention is for work to begin in 2027 and continue for about three years and three months continuously. The section will include an 8.2 kilometer tunnel and connecting branches with Line 8 in Mar de Cristal, as well as with the future Barajas depots. The six stops. Of the four alternatives that have been studied, the Community has selected the option which includes the following stations: Mar de Cristal, with connection to lines 4 and 8 under Arequipa Street. Ifema-Cárcavas, next to the expansion of the fairgrounds and close to the future Formula 1 circuit. Valdebebas/Ciudad de la Justicia Interchange, which will function as an intermodal node between Cercanías, buses and Metro. Isabel Zendal Nurse Hospital, 150 meters from the health center. Terminal 4 of the airport, with connection to Line 8 and close to the future High Speed ​​station. Valdebebas Norte, located next to the planned Valdebebas Shopping shopping center. Room to grow. The design maintains the possibility of build two additional stations in the future: one in the Cristalia area and another in Valdebebas, intended to serve the northeastern area of ​​the neighborhood. The idea is to give the possibility of expanding the line as these areas develop at an urban level little by little. How it will be excavated. Most of the tunnel It will be built using a tunnel boring machinedividing the work into two main sections. The first will advance from an attack well on Fernando Higueras Street towards Mar de Cristal, while the second will start from Secundino Zuazo Avenue. But not everything will go to a tunnel boring machine, since in some areas there will be no choice but to continue with pick and shovel to touch some urban elements as little as possible and reduce noise pollution during the construction phase. Why the Line 11. Currently, it is the least used line on the network, with only seven stations that run through part of Carabanchel and Leganés. According to data of Metro de Madrid, its demand represents only 1.08% of the total network, well below Line 6, which is close to 25%. This extension is part of a broader plan that aims to transform L11 into a large diagonal of 33.5 kilometers that connects Cuatro Vientos with Valdebebas. Status of the other sections. While this project progresses, the central section between Plaza Elíptica and Conde de Casal already exceeds 50% executionwith five stations planned and an investment close to 500 million euros. It is the opposite of the section between Conde de Casal and Hortaleza, with up to 14 stations planned, and which remains paralyzed waiting for the subsections of the line to be finally defined. Additionally, in the south, the 2.2 kilometer connection between La Fortuna and Cuatro Vientos is pending. Neighborhood inequality. Like any work carried out in Madrid, there are contrasts and all kinds of opinions. According to collect elDiario, the distribution of the stations has generated some debate. While Valdebebas, with around 30,000 inhabitants, will receive several stops and is even contemplating expanding its coverage, neighborhoods like Las Águilas, with around 50,000 residents, have been left out of the southern route, causing neighborhood protests over inequality in access to public transport. And now what. With the final approval of the informative study, the next step will be the bidding for the works, scheduled for the coming months. If the established deadlines are met, work would start in 2027 and the new connection could be operational around 2030. Cover image | Community of Madrid In Xataka | The great dream of Tres Cantos and Colmenar Viejo literally passes over El Pardo: “close” the M-50

China has managed to create an AI that has made Hollywood tremble. Disney has not been amused at all

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The phenomenon of the month in AI is Seedance 2.0. To date, the most amazing text-to-video creation model and theard a dart at the same industry from Hollywood. So much so that Disney itself has legally warned Bytedance, the Chinese giant behind this model. The notice. Sources of Reuters They claim that Disney has sent a cease and desist letter to Bytedance, accusing the Chinese company of having used company characters to train its Seedance 2.0 model. According to statements, Bytedance would have created a package of copyrighted characters to feed this artificial intelligence, the main reason why it is so accurate at recreating them. Bytedance’s response. The Chinese company has not acknowledged having used copyrighted characters to train its model, but it has reacted to Disney’s notice. “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.” Beyond the statement, the company has not detailed what measures it is taking to prevent users from distributing copyrighted content, such as the one we have been seeing flooding the network for two weeks. They are not the first. Disney has already taken similar measures against Character.AIan AI specialized in creating animated characters capable of perfectly emulating Disney characters. The company It only has an alliance with OpenAIwith whom he signed an agreement so that Sora could generate more than 200 characters thanks to a three-year license. The operation included a $1 billion investment by Disney in OpenAI. Doors to the countryside. “Creative prompt engineering” and code modifications to make AI bypass the very limitations for which it is programmed are inevitable, in addition to all the derived Open-Source models that can be trained outside the jurisdiction. The key here is not in the dispute between Disney and Bytedance, it is that China has created the first model that directly threatens the creation of cinematographic content. Join the enemy. For some time now, the film industry has been clear that the coming years they will be cuts and embrace of AI. CEOs like Sony have already spoken out and positioned themselves as “very focused on AI”, making it clear that the current problem for movies is expense. Models like Seedance now allow us to generate in minutes what previously required entire teams and million-dollar budgets. In the coming years, video generation models will force the industry to rethink its cost structure. In Xataka | We are entering a new era of robotics driven by AI and Disney is its perfect showcase

There are TikTok influencers reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ and not understanding its vocabulary. It shouldn’t surprise us

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A viral video where a young Spanish woman complains about the difficulty of reading the romantic classic ‘Wuthering Heights’ has sparked a generational debate about reading comprehension. But beyond the controversy, the data show a real problem: reading skills are falling in all generations, with digital natives being the sector of the population most especially affected. The video. It lasts just two minutesbut it has been generating debate for days. A 25-year-old girl complains, with her copy of ‘Wuthering Heights’ in hand, that she finds the language archaic, she needs to consult the dictionary constantly to understand terms like “tin” or “par excellence”, and she estimates that it will take months to finish it. The video has accumulated millions of views and has unleashed a generational war on social networks: how is it possible, say the most veterans, that a university student does not know relatively commonly used words or is not used to consulting a dictionary? The conversation should not be limited to pointing out blame and differences between educational levels. We are facing a generational change that alludes to how written language is processed, and ‘Wuthering Heights’ has become the accidental battlefield on which to explore that transformation. New times. There is a gap between contemporary narrative aimed at young audiences and literary classics. Young Adult (YA) prose, a genre that attracts millions of readers on social networks (a fact: 55% of the readers who roam TikTok are between 18 and 34 years old, and 78% they are women) prioritizes immediacy, agile dialogues and direct descriptions. It is literature designed for rapid consumption, in tune with digital rhythms. Emily Brontë, for her part, wrote for Victorian readers accustomed to long subordinate clauses, detailed descriptions, and a vocabulary that assumed a certain formal education. Distance is both temporal and structural: different narrative architectures for differently trained brains. The data. The TikTok viral could be interpreted as an isolated anecdote, but a recent study by the BBVA Foundation prepared by Spanish researchers with international data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). It reveals a progressive decline in reading and numerical skills since the Millennial generation: those born after 1980 show significantly lower cognitive skills than Baby Boomers and Generation X when they were the same age. According to the study, Generation Z obtains reading comprehension scores up to 20 points below Generation PIAAC standardized testswhich evaluate the ability to understand, interpret and use written information. The gap widens in numerical skills: young people born after 1995 show difficulties in interpreting graphs, calculating percentages or solving basic mathematical problems applied to real situations. The deterioration is systematic, and also affects developed countries with advanced educational systems. Eyes that do not see. The studies of eye tracking from the Nielsen Norman Group document how users read on the Internet following an F pattern: two horizontal sweeps across the top, followed by a quick vertical scan down the left side. Reading becomes selective keyword tracking. This behavior, typical of Internet browsing, is inappropriate for complex texts that require following arguments developed over multiple pages. The architecture of attention changes: we move from deep dive to shallow scan. The fault of social networks. Digital platforms are designed to capture attention through short, dopamine content. The algorithms reward 15-second videos, striking images, and texts that are consumed at a glance. The attention economy does not encourage depth, and reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ requires the opposite: sustained concentration, tolerance for ambiguity, the ability to memorize information while constructing cumulative meaning. They are skills that atrophy without training. If new generations show systematic deficits in these areas, the consequences transcend the debate over whether or not someone can read a Victorian classic. They affect how we process information of all kinds: medical, legal, financial, political… The young woman in the viral video may be a symptom of something more worrying than the inability to read texts with unusual vocabulary. Facilitate access? This controversy opens up a multitude of tremendously fascinating sub-controversies: educate better or facilitate access to complex texts? For example, Penguin Random House launched its collection in the United Kingdom in 2019. Penguin English Library with updated translations of classics, maintaining the original meaning but eliminating obsolete linguistic turns that slow down reading. The also British The School of Life He published versions “translated into modern English” of philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. AND apparentlythese editions sold 40% more than traditional versions among readers under 30 years of age during the year 2020-2021. But there is also the counterargument that simplifying language impoverishes the experience of reading. The classics are not just arguments or themes that can be transported to any packaging. For example, Brontë’s prose, with its labyrinthine subordinate clauses and convoluted vocabulary, builds atmosphere and rhythm. Removing that complexity to “make it easier” to read is like reducing the length of a classical music symphony because today’s listeners prefer three-minute songs. The search should perhaps be to improve reading training, not to adjust the texts to the less prepared reader. In Xataka | The best books to read in 2026: a selection of readings from all genres for a year between pages

Tech companies don’t want new graduates because they believe that AI is going to annihilate them. IBM is hiring non-stop

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The business world is so terrified of AI that recent graduate hiring is in crisis. However, there is a company that is just going in the opposite direction: IBM not only has not frozen these hirings, but is tripling them. And his argument is powerful. IBM wants new graduates. “We are tripling our hiring of junior positions,” explained Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s top human resources officer, in a interview at Charter. In fact, he highlighted, those positions they are filling “are for software developers and for all those jobs that they tell us AI can do.” It is a surprising statement, especially considering that the market trend is just the opposite. Unemployment among recent graduates—and among young people—is at record levels in the last decade in the United States. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The problem of unemployment in Gen Z. The young people of the generation Z (Born between 1997-2012 approximately) face one of the most complex times when looking for a first job. In the United States, the unemployment rate for recent graduates is at 5.6%, the highest in the decade except for the time of the pandemic. Managers of technology companies have been warning for some time that AI is going to greatly impact work, and especially in the field of programming. Junior profiles with a new focuseither. While competitors appear to show growing interest in replacing entry-level positions with automation — 37% plan to do so according to Korn Ferry—, IBM is changing the mentality. Newbie software engineers won’t spend their days chipping away at routine code that an AI can generate. Instead, they will focus on interacting with clients and monitoring model results. AI no longer replaces the junior, but forces him to be more strategic from day one. IBM is not the only one to think this way. Although it seems that the trend towards automation is clear, IBM is not alone in this flight forward. Dropbox is doing the same, and its head of human resources, Melanie Rosenwasser, believes that Gen Z has a fundamental advantage: they are better prepared to work with AI than veterans. According to her, “it’s as if (the young people of Gen Z) were on their bikes in the Tour de France while the rest of us are on training wheels,” she said. on Bloomberg. But. IBM’s move is not without a certain cynicism. The company made this announcement a week after carry out a mass layoff to focus on growth areas. It is as if they have created a revolving door in which they have removed expensive seniority to let in cheaper youth. AI as an amplifier. Be that as it may, the CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna, defends this strategy – logical – indicating that AI is not a substitute for human capacity, but rather an amplifier. The speech, whether we believe it or not, represents a unique commitment, especially now that companies seem to propose that they will do the same with many fewer employees. For IBM, the bet is on loyalty and knowledge cultivated from the base instead of subordinating everything to algorithms. “Developers, developers, developers!”. At the .NET event that Microsoft organized in 1999, the famous viral moment occurred in which an overexcited and sweaty Ballmer sang that from “Developers, developers, developers!” non-stop. The company was trying to attract talent again with that speech, but in reality that work had been intense years before. Hiring recent graduates worked very well for Microsoft. Steven Sinofsky, who led the development of Windows 7, told on Twitter how Microsoft became what it was thanks to its strategy of hiring recent graduates—even if they had not completed their degree. The development of Office, for example, was especially nourished by these young people, but that strategy was stopped. As Sinofsky explains, “The ‘dark times’ were accentuated by a forced pause in hiring recent graduates, and the consequences were felt five years later.” In Xataka | “They are much more daring”: Gen Z is overturning all labor consensus in its massive entry into work

after buying EA it is the turn of a mobile giant

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The Saudi Sovereign Fund, through Savvy Games Group, continues to expand its gaming empire. After announce the purchase of Electronic Arts for $50 billionis now negotiating to acquire Moonton Technology for a price that could reach 7 billion, consolidating its dominance in the lucrative mobile gaming market. The purchase. Just four months after announcing the purchase of EA, Saudi Arabia returns to the negotiating table. This time the target is Moonton Technology, the developer of ‘Mobile Legends: Bang Bang‘, one of the most successful mobile MOBAs on the planet. Savvy Games Group, subsidiary of the Saudi Sovereign Fund, is finalizing an operation valued between 6,000 and 7,000 million dollars to acquire the studio, currently owned by ByteDancethe parent company of TikTok. The strategy. The figure may seem modest compared to EA’s mega purchase, but it accurately reflects the strategic value of the Asian mobile market. Mobile Legends has accumulated more than a billion global downloads and dominates Southeast Asia, where it has managed to capitalize on a massive player base despite having faced multiple Riot Games legal lawsuits for violation of the intellectual property of ‘League of Legends’. The sentences forced Moonton to pay million-dollar compensation, but did not stop its growth in territories where access to consoles and PCs is limited. Why the mobile? Observers who believe that the mobile market is not what it was in the days of ‘Angry Birds’ are wrong: The sector generated more revenue in 2025 than PC and consoles combinedwith the model free-to-play demonstrating enormous profitability. ‘Monopoly GO‘, developed by Scopely (also Saudi owned since 2023), has generated approximately 6 billion dollars since its launch. A single application whose billing alone covers the price of Moonton. This equation explains why the kingdom looks with such interest towards mobile gaming: the relationship between initial investment and potential return far exceeds that of traditional AAA blockbusters. Controlling cell phones. With Moonton under its control, Saudi Arabia would manage three of the most lucrative mobile developers in the world (along with Scopely and the division gaming of Niantic), positioning itself as a dominant player in a segment where until now the Chinese Tencent exercised almost absolute hegemony. The operation could be closed during this first quarter of 2026, consolidating a movement that began as economic diversification and evolves towards something much more ambitious: the vertical control of entire segments of the video game industry. And more than mobile phones. The Saudi Sovereign Fund’s investment catalog in the video game industry draws a control map that encompasses SNK (‘The King of Fighters’, ‘Metal Slug’), Scopely (‘Monopoly GO’, ‘Star Trek Fleet Command’), Niantic’s gaming division (‘Peridot’, ‘Monster Hunter Now’) and ESL FaceIt Group (the largest organizer of esports competitions in the world). Five companies that alone generate billions annually and, above all, cover completely different markets. The power of actions. But the true dimension of Saudi power is revealed when its shareholding is analyzed. The fund maintains between 5% and 10% of shares at Nintendo, Koei Tecmo, Embracer Group, Nexon, Capcom, Take-Two Interactive, NCSoft, Square Enix and Bandai Namco. They are not testimonial investments: in several cases it is the second or third largest shareholder after the founders or traditional Japanese funds. This gives it influence on boards of directors, veto power over strategic decisions and privileged access to sensitive corporate information. At Ubisoft and Microsoft. The links with Ubisoft and Microsoft are more opaque. There is a 2022 agreement after which Savvy acquired minority stakes in Ubi as the Guillemot family fought hostile takeover attempts by activist investors, but the exact terms of the pact were never made public. With Microsoft, the relationship transcends the purely financial: Saudi Arabia has maintained investments in the technology matrix since 2016 and collaborates with Xbox on server infrastructure for the Middle East. Leaving Tencent behind. At the time, Tencent’s strategy generated regulatory alarms in the West due to concentration of power, but the Saudi approach is more aggressive in a key aspect: while the Chinese company sought majority stakes that would give it operational control but respected brands and structures, the kingdom has absolute ownership of medium-sized studios and also strategic stakes in consolidated giants. This hybridization allows for vertical influence without triggering antitrust alerts. The European Commission investigated for 18 months Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but authorities have not publicly questioned that a single actor controls significant stakes in nine of the twenty publishers largest in the world while directly owning three mobile developers that bill more than $10 billion annually combined. With the imminent incorporation of EA and Moonton, Saudi Arabia will have spent more than 70 billion dollars on gaming from 2021. To put it in perspective: that figure exceeds the current market value of Ubisoft, Capcom and Square Enix combined. A future of acquisitions. It is an entire recreational empire that could increase in the future: it is less supervised by regulatory authorities than other sectors and, for the moment, it has a very wide margin for growth. Few acquisitions comparable in magnitude remain in the pipeline, but the project Saudi Vision 2030which wants to diversify the country’s economy so as not to depend so much on oil, makes the nation look to the future. And this is a very financially attractive future. In Xataka | How Saudi Arabia and China are dividing up the video game industry with a checkbook

“The more times you are late for work, the harder it will be for the company to fire you”

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Arriving late to work every day, leaving before your time or committing various irregularities in your day can cause your company to give you a warning, sanction you or, in the most serious cases, even apply a disciplinary dismissal for breaching the conditions you accepted in your employment contract. However, as labor lawyer Juanma Lorente highlights in one of his recent videosif you do it repetitively and the company does not warn you for it, that violation can become your best ally to protect you from disciplinary dismissal. Being late is bad, but it can protect you. The labor expert explains in his video a legal paradox in which the company’s inaction can turn an infraction into the best defense for a worker against a legal claim for disciplinary dismissal. The lawyer explains the situation with a very simple example: “Imagine that you have been late to work for 2 years. 5, 10 or 15 minutes and the company does not tell you anything. You arrive and sign in with the real time at which you are arriving and the company tolerates it. From one moment to the next, after two years of arriving late, you find a dismissal letter in which they fire you for arriving late.” According to Lorente, this dismissal would be unfair because the company allowed the “habit” of being late for two years, without reacting in all that time. The expert assures that this inaction represents a tacit permissiveness of that conduct, which is why it could not be used as a reason for dismissal before a judge. Silence gives consent. Although it may be incongruous, since the employee’s violation is effectively proven, the repetition of this behavior without a response from the company is known as corporate tolerance. As and how do they count From the Lex-it law firm, this case occurs when a company is aware of the worker’s repeated infraction, such as repeated delays, but does not sanction it for a long time. This means that a subsequent dismissal for the same reason is seen as unfair by the judges, since the company seemed to accept it and “tolerate” the infraction. As the labor lawyer points out, “If he has not previously sanctioned you for the same thing, has allowed it and has tolerated it, he will not be able to use it to fire you.” ​This principle forces companies to follow a scale of sanctions that is applied from the first infraction of employees: from a simple specific warning to suspensions, before reaching disciplinary dismissal. Ignoring this scale of warnings means that the company cannot allege it as a “direct” reason for dismissal because, according to the court, the company tolerated this behavior. The Supreme Court has already applied it. The Supreme Court has confirmed this doctrine in several rulings in which disciplinary dismissals have been rejected because companies have cited infractions as reasons for dismissal that they have tolerated for years without any warning. The result in all cases has been to reject the disciplinary dismissals and declare them unfair dismissals with compensation of 33 days per year worked, despite it being proven that, in fact, the employee had been committing a violation of the conditions for a long time. In one of those sentencesthe Supreme Court states: “Sanctioning with the greatest severity (disciplinary dismissal) conduct that had previously been tolerated, without any prior warning to the employee that such tolerance was going to end, would be contrary to the employer’s good faith.” ​A practical example: he was late 176 times. A very clear example of this legal paradox is found in the case of the employee of an optician in Asturias who arrived late to her job up to 176 times without the company reprimanding her for it. When the company informed him of his disciplinary dismissal, the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias considered it “irrational, disproportionate and incongruous.” The reason was that the company had demonstrated business tolerance by allowing 176 delays without warning or sanctioning the employee, and resorting directly to disciplinary dismissal. In Xataka | Going to the bathroom is not work: a Swiss court allows a company to force its employees to clock in when they go to the bathroom Image | Unsplash (Campaign Creators)

The extreme stress of the Spanish water network explained from within

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The images have flooded social networks this weekend: the Aldeadávila dam “turbinating at full capacity” with the Duero river descending with enormous force, or the Iznájar reservoir recovering its splendor in a matter of days. They are hypnotic images that hide a much more tense and calculated reality. While the citizen sees natural spectacles, the engineers see a fight against the disaster. In the midst of this “festival” of storms that has shaken the peninsula this month of February, One phrase sums up the situation better than any other. It is pronounced by José María Sanz de Galdeanodirector of Hydrological Planning and Works of the Basque Water Agency (URA): “The dams were not designed for floods, but today they are key to cushioning them.” These infrastructures, designed decades ago so that water comes out when you turn on the tap or to turn on the light, have become—almost by historical accident—the last line of defense between the perfect storm and the safety of the populations downstream. A winter concentrated in a few days. To understand the magnitude of the event, we must first look at the Basque Country, where the orography and intense rains have tested the system. As explained by Sanz de Galdeano in the SER ChainEuskadi has faced a winter marked by episodes of very intense rain concentrated in very few days. The situation has forced the activation of the two major Basque regulatory systems. On the one hand, the Zadorra system composed of the Ullibarri-Gamboa reservoir and the Urrunaga dam. On the other hand, the Añarbe system is responsible for supplying the Donostialdea area. It is not a local phenomenon. It is a symptom of a broader hydrometeorological pattern that has affected the entire peninsula. While in the Tormes system, reservoirs like Santa Teresa are close to 80% and release water preventively to defend the city of SalamancaIn the south the situation has been even more drastic. In Andalusia, the Iznájar reservoir—the giant of the community— has doubled its reserves in just two weeks, going from a critical 25% to exceeding 50%, something that had not been seen in a decade. The intensity has been such that the AEMET even warned of scenarios of soil saturation with impacts “some of the highest in the world”, causing water to gush directly from the ground in places like Grazalema (Cádiz). forcing preventive evacuations. From supply to “lamination”. The relevant thing about these weeks is not only that it has rained, but how we have managed that rain. Sanz de Galdeano puts his finger on the sore: “These infrastructures were built primarily for water supply, not specifically to laminate avenues.” However, its immense storage capacity has made it possible to change its function on the fly. Dams have acted as giant shock absorbers. “They have sufficient volume to play with reserves, create space and retain water at the most critical moments,” says the director of URA. Sanz de Galdeano’s warning has scientific support. A study on the effectiveness of dams in the face of climate change confirms that infrastructure designed with “historical data” They are operating blind to the new reality. Old models did not account for this extreme variability; under severe warming scenarios, the risk of large dams overflowing could multiply by up to 17 compared to historical records. The conclusion is technical but terrifying: the effectiveness of a dam decreases dramatically under extreme hydrological regimes if adaptive management is not applied. This excess water has had an unexpected side effect on the energy market: Spain’s “battery” it’s so loaded (117% more stored hydroelectric energy than last year) that nuclear energy is no longer competitive. The Trillo plant, for example, has been disconnected from the grid because, given such an abundance of turbineable water, the numbers simply “did not add up.” Choreography of floodgates. The precision mathematics that decides how much water reaches your home. The management of these crises is a precision choreography that Sanz de Galdeano graphically defines as working “with one eye on the river and another on the sky.” The technical key lies in the “reservoir”: the empty space that is deliberately left in the reservoir before the rain arrives in order to swallow the flood. The director of URA details how it is applied this differently depending on the capacity of each system: In the Zadorra (High regulation): These dams control 60% of the upstream basin. This allows for drastic intervention. The figures from Sunday night are the best example: 260 cubic meters per second of furious water entered the system, but the floodgates only let out 54. That difference (more than 200 m³/s retained) is the flood that was avoided. In Añarbe (Less regulation): Here the dam only controls 23% of the basin. Most of the river water circulates freely, so there is less room for maneuver. Even so, the strategy is the same: when the river goes high, floodgates are closed to retain “as much as possible.” All this is done under administrative coordination complex but fluid between URA, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation and that of the Cantabrian Sea. Not all barriers are the same. In this context of saving dams, a reasonable question arises: why then are some dams on Basque rivers being demolished? Sanz de Galdeano makes a crucial distinction between large regulatory infrastructures and small weirs. “These are not large infrastructures like those of Zadorra, but rather low-rise structures that have no real capacity to manage avenues,” he clarifies. The elimination of these small obstacles responds to two logics: Environmental: they allow fish and fauna to ascend the river, improving ecological health. Hydraulics: Although it may seem contradictory, these small walls can raise the water table in local floods, worsening the problem instead of solving it. However, large dams have their own silent enemy: sediment. Experts and organizations like Greenpeace warn that torrential rains They drag tons of mud that accumulate at the bottom of the reservoirs, subtracting their real capacity (that “hole” that Galdeano spoke of) and … Read more

a Great Wall of fishing barges

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A silent war is being fought in the South China Sea. No weapons are fired, but they are constantly mobilized huge warshipspatrol boats and experimental missile launch platforms. The area is a hotbed in which China claims Japanese and Taiwanese territories as its own, but among so much military maneuver, the movement that China made in mid-January: Hundreds of fishing boats marched to create an artificial reef. It is the ‘Great Fishing Wall’, and the curious thing is that it has not been an isolated event. what has happened. It happened last January 11. In a report of The New York Timesit was exposed how at least 1,400 Chinese fishing boats abandoned their usual tasks to group together in a highly coordinated manner at a midpoint between China and Japan. The result was a ‘wall’ about 300 kilometers long and with a density that forced some transport ships that had to cross the area to carry out maneuvers to avoid or, directly, go around. January 9 | Image from The New York Times January 11 | Image from The New York Times It’s not the first time. The fishing choreography is impressive from a satellite view, but the most curious thing is that the January 11 maneuver was not an isolated event. It has been repeated on at least one occasion. Specifically, on Christmas Day 2025, when more than 2,000 ships gathered to form an inverse “L”. The long “wall” was also located between China and Japan, but the shorter wall was planted at a point that created a division between Taiwan and the mainland’s most important ports. In the NYT article, the analysts consulted they point They had already seen some similar unusual maneuvers, but on a scale of a couple of hundred ships, never something as massive as the operations of December 25 and January 11. Christmas Operation | Image from The New York Times Because. China has been seeking for years to consolidate its control over a large part of that maritime territory. It seeks to legitimize its sovereignty over islands and reefs that Japan and Taiwan They maintain that they are theirs property as part of the “historical territory”. To apply pressure, from time to time China takes its warships out for a walksomething to which Japan also responds with their own (even with plans to rearm as they had not done since World War II). Another way to mark muscle is through dozens of artificial islands that China has been building for decadesand all to ensure strategic trade routes and reinforce its position in the regional system, but also to exercise sovereignty in an area with valuable resources such as fishing (something that China needs like eating), the hydrocarbons and until rare earth (that China already dominatesbut you can always cover more in such a powerful strategic resource). The result is the militarization of that region, with a United States that has joined the ‘call’ seeking to prevent China from covering more than it currently has and taking off state-of-the-art weapons in collaboration with Japan. Maritime Militia. Two factors stand out in this story. The first is the speed at which the ships were organized and the precision with which they headed to the indicated point. The second is how effective the blocking is. Seeing that the transports had to avoid this fishing militia (which is a term that has been used before), in a crisis situation, China could mobilize hundreds of civilian ships to obstruct sea lanes, complicating military operations such as ship deployment and supply. Because the theory indicates that the enemy powers would not shoot at or run over those civilian ships. Lure. And, of course, American analysts have not missed the opportunity to give their vision. Thomas Shugart is a former US naval officer and noted that these masses of small ships could be more than just a blockade: They could act as decoys for missiles and torpedoes. Radars would be overwhelmed by a map full of small targets, camouflaging and protecting the real warships. They do not neglect military force. Faced with such a deployment, other analysts “praised” the coordination capacity to ensure that so many ships entered into a formation like the one seen on both dates and, as usual, China has not said anything about these maneuvers, but from the United States it has been verified that they were real ships, no false signs to confuse. And most importantly, the last maneuver occurred days after China completed some military maneuvers around Taiwan with the aim of blockading the island. Because, although the maneuver of thousands of fishing boats mounting a physical blockade is something striking, the South China Sea has witnessed several more serious movements by China in recent days. For example, it has been reported that The J-16s of the People’s Liberation Army have approached dangerously at Taiwanese F-16s, even launching flares when Taiwanese fighters were going to intercept them. Also the crossing of a red line by China when a military drone, for the first time, invaded Taiwan airspace. And all while the US is convinced that China is doing nuclear tests while calling for calm. The end, military maneuvers on the maritime border have been a constant for years, but the coordinated choreography of fishing boats can be a monumental headache if someone decides to attack civilian vessels, no matter how much they block critical routes. And it is something that seems like a brutal pressure weapon with which it is not necessary to fire a single shot to exert that influence. Images | Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell In Xataka | China once again shows its spaceship worthy of ‘Star Wars’. It is so beast that it is impossible with current technology

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