They learned cinema on YouTube, they have raised 300 million with their films and they have achieved something: defeating Star Wars

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Three horror movies. Budgets ranging from a ridiculous million dollars for one to ten million for another. Directors of 26, 34 and 20 years old trained on YouTube, not in schools for children of. So far in 2026, those three films have grossed more than $300 million in the North American market. Franchise cinema is not dead, of course, and we are going to prove it this year with the premiere of ‘Doomsday‘ (although, for once, surprises are no longer ruled out). But there are issues that seem to be changing in another sense. The ‘Backrooms’ explosion. Last weekend,’Backrooms‘ (directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons) collection 81.4 million dollars in North America and 118 million worldwide in its first weekend (and it does not arrive in countries like Spain until the end of June), with a budget of only ten million. It is the biggest premiere in the history of A24surpassing the previous record held by ‘Civil War‘by Alex Garland. Parsons also becomes the youngest director to top the US domestic box office, taking that record from Josh Trank, who was 27 years old when ‘Chronicle’ topped the charts in 2012. Unstoppable obsession. At the same time, ‘Obsession’ (by Curry Barker, 26 years old) added 26.4 million in its third weekend, 54% more than the previous week, starting from a budget of one million dollars. Its domestic total already exceeds 104 million. Meanwhile, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu‘, with a budget of 165 million, fell 69% compared to its opening week and was third on the list of box office receipts that week. We will see ‘Obsession’ this weekend in Spain. The precedent. January had already given the first sign. ‘Iron Lung’ (written, directed, starring and self-distributed by Mark Fischbach, Markiplier on YouTube, 34 years old), debuted with 17.8 million domestic dollars and reached 52 million at the global box office from a budget of three. Fischbach didn’t even go through a study: he self-financed and distributed the film himselfpocketing half of the world gross. Young audience. It is obvious where these collections come from: 86% of the opening audience for ‘Backrooms’ was under 35 years old, and 44% under 21. ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, not to get away from Disney’s setback with a financially similar debut the previous week, had a share of those under 25 years of age of 27%, although on paper, it should have attracted more viewers of that age (which corroborates that at this point ‘Star Wars’ is entirely a franchise for kids over forty.) These directors who came from YouTube did not summon a new audience, but rather the one they already brought from the internet. Warner Bros. Motion Pictures co-head Michael De Luca summed it up in a conference in which said that these directors “They are in dialogue with their audience from the first moment.” By the time movies like these hit theaters, he added, “they’ve already had a billion screenings.” Three directors, a common pattern. In 2022, Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute short film to YouTube titled ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’shot from his bedroom with the help of the 3D graphics software Blender. Over the next few years, episodes of the series They accumulated more than 197 million views. Curry Barker, on the other hand, came from the sketch comedy channel ‘That’s a Bad Idea’ which currently has over 700 million cumulative views across platforms. In 2024 he filmed ‘Milk & Serial’, a found footage horror with $800 budget, almost all of it spent on the camera. He spent a year trying to get mainstream distribution without success. He uploaded it for free to YouTube and accumulated 1.6 million views. Mark Fischbach, for his part, has been on YouTube since 2012. He had experimented with the film format in two of his own productions for YouTube (‘A Heist with Markiplier’ and ‘In Space with Markiplier’) before adapting ‘Iron Lung’, David Szymanski’s indie horror video game published in 2022. Why the terror. American terror has exceeded 800 million dollars worldwide so far this year, and these three films directed by YouTube creators account for a third of that figure. But… why this devotion to the genre, which goes hand in hand with the good state of health that enjoy in recent years? Horror operates well with low budgets, and the young audience that grew up with creepypasta and found footages on YouTube has a particular relationship with that aesthetic space. Testing ground. The video clips of the nineties were the laboratory where authors such as David Fincher or Michel Gondry developed their visual grammar before jumping into cinema. Now, YouTube serves as a testing ground for the new generation of filmmakers. That’s why studios and agents now scour YouTube for new names. Now what. Barker has already filmed his next film, a horror comedy titled ‘Anything but Ghosts’, and A24 has hired him for a remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. Parsons wants to expand the ‘Backrooms’ universe, possibly in television format. Fischbach, for his part, has already made it clear that he would like to collaborate with a large studio on future projects, without giving up creative control. It is possibly the one with the most traditional discovery profile in the underground and jump to the big leagues. For now, ‘Backrooms’ could end its box office career between $140 and $160 million in the United States alone, which would make the film one of the biggest hits of the year. Not bad for an idea that started as just another meme on 4chan. In Xataka | Cinema can only survive by competing in the “experience” market. That’s why Madrid already has its 70 mm projector

that’s why he has a new plan

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YouTube has announced an important change in its transparency policy. And starting this month, the platform will stop depending solely on the boxes referring to AI that content creators check when uploading their videos and will begin to detect and label the videos generated with this technology itself. In addition, it will make these labels more visible both in the usual videos and in the Shorts. We tell you all the details. What exactly changes. Until now, the responsibility fell on whoever uploaded the video. Starting in 2024, YouTube requires creators to disclose when they use realistic AI that could be mistaken for a real person, place, or event. The problem is that the creators didn’t have much incentive to be honest. From now on, according to explains According to the company itself, if a creator does not indicate that they have used AI but their systems detect “significant use of photorealistic AI”, the label will still be applied automatically. More visible labels. The other big change is where those notices appear. Previously, the information was hidden in the extended description of the video, in a dedicated section, so that only those who specifically went to look for it saw it. For long videos, the label (a symbol with the word “AI” next to an information icon) will now appear just below the player, above the description. In the Shorts it will be shown superimposed over the video itself. YouTube affirms that with this change the viewer gets the context “at a glance.” What the system does not cover. The featured tag is intended only for photorealistic or substantially AI-modified content. Videos that are animated, clearly unrealistic, or have minor tweaks will continue to display the warning only in the extended description. Here YouTube is clearly differentiating between AI that can confuse the user or create disinformation and AI for entertainment purposes. How YouTube detects AI. The truth is that the company has not been too specific about how it will detect AI in videos. Which yes mention There are two cases that activate the label without exception: videos with C2PA metadata indicating that they are completely generated by AI, and those created with Google’s own tools, such as Veo or Dream Screen. On the other hand, if a user believes that their video has been flagged in error, they can correct the status in YouTube Studio, except in the two situations mentioned where the flag is permanent. A reasonable decision. The move comes shortly after Google presented in your I/O conference the model family Gemini Omnicapable of generating video with AI in a realistic and increasingly precise way. Added to this is that YouTube and the rest of the social networks have been dealing with the avalanche of ‘AI Slop‘, especially in the Shorts. The company also claims to have improved its deepfake detection technology, which now allows any adult to search for matches of their face on the platform. No impact on money or referrals. YouTube assures that carrying an AI tag will not affect how a video is recommended or its ability to monetize. The company maintains that the goal is to “balance transparency with creator control,” not to penalize the use of the technology. And now what. It remains to be seen how reliable the automatic detection will be and how many videos will continue to escape the system, since YouTube itself admits that there may be AI content without the new label. The platform has been criticized for the inconsistency of its labeling system to date, so we will have to wait to find out if the system ends up working. Cover image | YouTube In Xataka | Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: “People talk about AI eliminating jobs. It’s complete nonsense”

We’ve been sold melatonin as the ultimate harmless sleep supplement. Science does not think the same

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By taking a walk through any pharmacy, supermarket or online store, it is easy to find melatonin as the definitive solution to sleep problems and with the great claim of being something totally natural that our body secretes. Pills, drops, infusions or even gummies are some of the presentations in which we find a product that for many should not be available to everyone and that, in their opinion, It should be regulated like any other medicine. The alarm voice. The scientific community and regulatory bodies They are starting to sound the alarm and the central idea is clear: melatonin is not as harmless as it is often promoted and, according to experts, it should be treated with the same rigor as a medication, and not as a simple vitamin supplement. The labels. One of the biggest problems with melatonin, especially in countries like the United States where it is regulated as a dietary supplement, is the lack of strict control over its production. Here a study published in 2017 put a worrying fact on the table when seeing that there are a great variability between what the labels say and what the bottle actually contains. And when analyzing multiple brands, researchers found products that contained from 83% less melatonin than declared, to an alarming 478% more. And if that were not enough, the study detected the presence of serotonin in several of these supplements, which is a neurotransmitter that is regulated. It’s not something magical. Marketing has positioned melatonin as a universal solution for sleep that can be consumed without almost any type of control or limit. But here the different reviews conclude that its benefits are modest, without having a powerful hypnotic effect, but rather that its real usefulness lies in adjusting specific circadian rhythm disorders such as jet lag, so use should be selective and not routine. Furthermore, it is not without risks. One of the most striking is the incompatibility that taking melatonin may have. with anticoagulant medicationswhich requires medical supervision. This is something that a priori is not known to patients as they do not go to the doctor for a prescription and have melatonin available on a supermarket shelf. The silent danger. The rise of melatonin in gummy form has brought with it very serious collateral damage, since children may see it as a candy, which has led to an increase in visits to the emergency room in the United States due to excessive consumption of melatonin. In Spain, The approach taken is more strict, since drug regulatory agencies evaluate the safety of this substance in the key of medicinealthough you can buy it almost without any type of control when going to any supermarket. The positive part here is that the highest concentrations of melatonin can only be prescribed by a doctor in consultation so that the pharmacy can make a master preparation, considering it as just another medication, which is what is requested internationally. Images | James Yarema Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | Someone has said that melatonin damages the heart. The reality, according to science, is that we can be calm

2026 will be a historic year for smartphones. The worst year in history, specifically

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The smartphone market is touched. That of technology, in general, with the brands themselves warning months ago about what was coming and encouraging us to anticipate technological purchases in the coming years as soon as possible. The rise of artificial intelligence and the Big Tech fever for building data centers has broken the consumer market with increasingly expensive computers, inaccessible components and the disappearance of the “cheap mobile”. Because 2026 is not being a good year to buy technology to the point that there is already talk of the worst year in history for smartphones. Disaster in sight. We already knew that 2026 was going to be bad, but now the analyst firm Counterpoint Research has revised their forecasts to point out something interesting: it will be worse than we expected. If in February they pointed to a drop in the year-on-year volume of smartphone shipments this year of 12.4%, they have now revised those forecasts to go a little further: up to 13.9%. This implies that this year some 1,080 million mobile phones will be shipped, which seems like a lot, but it represents 174 million fewer devices than in 2025. The translation is that it will be the lowest annual volume since 2013, when everything was field, experimentation and the newest smartphones continued to coexist with strange proposals and ‘dumb phones’. No options. The reason is the persistence of the component crisis, mainly storage and RAM memory. The acceleration of Big Tech to build more AI infrastructure is causing himcomponent production lines For the consumer sector (in which mobile phones are found) it does not have components or has to buy them much more expensively. This, evidently, causes the sales price of the device to increase. The impact is there because the memory represented 20% of the manufacturing invoice for an entry mobile. Now that percentage rises to 40% or more and, although everything increases in price or does not improve as it should from one generation to the next to cushion the impact, manufacturers really do not have many more options. The calculations are there and they make the new mobile phones less attractive. In the entry range – increments of 30 dollars per unit. In the mid range – from 60 to 80 dollars per unit. In the premium – 100 and 150 dollars per unit. Strategy. These manufacturers have two options on the table. Or they don’t launch new devices this year, something that some industry giants have already targetedensuring that the situation will cause some companies to fall by the wayside because their business depends directly on the devices… or they launch new models, but without better specifications and more expensive. It is estimated that smartphone prices worldwide increased by 14% during the first quarter of this year, with a shortage hitting the entry and mid-range segment harder than that of more premium mobile phones. The reason is that in the mid-range the margins are tighter and in the premium it is other components that raise the bill (cameras or screens, for example), in addition to having wider margins. In figures. It is affordable mobile phones that are bearing the brunt, with a 46% drop in shipments in this first quarter due to the reduction in the supply of LPDDR4 memory. In fact, Samsung is one of the largest on the market and already pointed out weeks ago that they were going to abandon the LPDDR4 to focus on the LPDDR5 which is better, but also more expensive. An example with first and last names is Galaxy A57a mobile that exemplifies this price increase in the mid-range because one GB of RAM is already worth twice as much as three months ago. To contextualize this, let’s go with some figures: Apple (premium segment) – stable shipments. Samsung (all segments, but strong presence in premium) – 4% drop. Xiaomi (all segments, but more in the mid-range) – 20% drop. Honor (all segments, but more in the mid-range) – 28% drop. Transsion (especially entry range) – 32% drop. No recovery on the horizon. The good news? Really, there is no good news. Coaunterresearch Point is just one source, but a forecast Parallel to IDC, which also contemplates this drop in shipments of 13.9%, points to an additional 1.1% of 1.1%. It is in 2028 when the situation is expected to begin to improve, but without returning to the state we had just two years ago. It will be a slow recovery and the market will suffer more in those areas where there is a greater concentration of mobile phones that move around 200 euros. It is, as we said months ago, the disappearance of the cheap mobile in favor of a more resilient high-end and premium because of what we commented about sales margins. But hey, in the end, it is a situation that we are seeing in all consumer devices. Apple is discontinuing options for its Macs with certain memory combinations, the Steam Deck just went up 300 euros suddenly, The Raspberry Pi has increased tremendously and it is not known when they will come out Steam MachinePS6 or Xbox Project Helix because no one wants to compromise. The only thing we know about the new Xbox is what its new CEO said: It will be expensive due to the component crisis. In Xataka | Samsung is doing so well that its workers threatened to strike if it didn’t distribute benefits. And they have won

review with features, price and specifications

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A year ago I had the opportunity to try the Dreame A2a 2,800 euro robotic lawnmower that I loved, but it was too much for the 100 square meters of the garden at home. In a garden like this something smaller, more compact and, above all, cheaper would have been enough. Then Mova, Dreame’s sub-brand, arrived and put its ViAX 500a smaller, more humble lawnmower robot with a price tag of 749 euros. And that’s another movie. ✅ Buy it if… You have a small garden and you want to forget about periodic maintenance. You are looking for a silent robot. You value good obstacle detection. ❌ Don’t buy it if… You have a large garden, greater than 100-150 square meters. It is full of trees or decorative objects. You want to configure absolutely everything from the app. The essentials in 30 seconds The Mova ViAX 500 stands out for delivering what it promises: it is a robotic lawnmower designed for small gardens, with good navigation and programming capabilities. The cut is uniform and adjustable and the battery is enough to cover a garden of 100-120 square meters such as that of a chalet. Its biggest problem is around the edges and in smaller areas. The robot seems to be afraid of getting too close to the edge, especially when the surface is not quite ready, and small areas of grass tend to not go over them completely. In general, it is a good purchase if we are looking for a robot that we can program and forget about it until it is due for maintenance. Now, in a large house with extensive gardens, many nooks, trees and narrow areas, it is quite likely that it will suffer more. MOVA ViAX 500, Robot Lawn Mower, 500㎡ Mapping, AI Automapping without RTK, 360° LiDAR + AI Dual Vision, Intelligent Obstacle Avoidance, U-Shaped Trajectories The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Our experience with the Mova ViAX 500 MOVA ViAX 500 | Image: Xataka Setting it up is very easy (and a tip). Setting up these devices is just as easy as setting up a robot vacuum cleaner: You take it out, put it in the base, connect it to WiFi and map the area. You must do the latter by hand, controlling it as if it were a radio-controlled car. The base must be anchored to the ground with the included plastic screws and, obviously, you must connect it to the power. The cable, luckily, is very, very long, so you can pull it into the house if necessary. The little advice: If you can, put the foundation in the shade. The summer heat plays against these devices, even more so considering that the base does not have a hood. If your garden allows it, place the base in a place where the sun does not shine fully all day. Don’t worry about irrigators or rain, the robot has IPX6 resistance and can withstand them without problem. Cuts the grass pretty well. The robot has a rotating platform with three blades at the bottom. We can adjust this from the robot itself (not from the app) so that the cutting height is between two and six centimeters. My recommendation: three-four centimeters. It can also be configured to cut in a zig-zag pattern, which is recommended to improve uniformity, as well as programming. No complaints in this regard, except that the smallest areas are usually reviewed halfway. It’s as if the robot thinks it’s too big to work in that area. Be careful with edges and trees. Although the navigation via LiDAR and camera is exceptional, I have to give the slap on the wrist at the edges. Although it can be configured to “go in” a little further, the truth is that if the edge is not perfectly flush with the ground you will see that, over time, it will end up being longer than the rest of the garden. And it will be noticed. The same thing happens when approaching trees or decorations. Many times it seems that the robot is afraid to get a little closer, a fear that robot vacuum cleaners overcame a long time ago. MOVA ViAX 500 | Image: Xataka A fair and necessary autonomy. The robot has a battery with enough capacity to, in standard mode, cut 120 square meters in about an hour and a half. Enough for my garden. With efficient mode, the figure reaches 150 square meters. If the battery runs out, the robot returns to the base, charges itself (in about an hour) and picks up where it left off. Zero problems with this. Don’t forget the rest of the garden. Although the obstacle detection works really well, my recommendation is to spend a few minutes cleaning up the garden before starting the robot. If you have fruit trees and the fruit has fallen, pick it up or prepare for an exquisite wheel and blade cleaning session. I speak from experience. If you have left the hose loose, pick it up; And if you have pets, I, personally, would put them inside the house while the robot does its thing for a mental health issue. Mova ViAX 500 technical sheet mova viax 500 Mapping and navigation UltraEyes 2.0 AI-assisted dual vision 360º LiDAR obstacle avoidance UltraEyes 2.0 AI-assisted dual vision 360º LiDAR cutting capacity 500 m² cutting height 2-6 centimeters Cutting efficiency Standard mode: 120m²/load Efficient mode: 150m²/charge Cutting width 20cm Slope performance Up to 22 (40%) traction system front wheel drive 1x universal wheel battery 4 Ah Load: 3A noise level Up to 57 dB water resistance IPX6 others Double map Multi-zone management Cutting modes Remote control Live video tracking Voice alerts AirTag storage Elevation Alerts People detection Link module (optional) price 749 euros Mova ViAX 500, Xataka’s opinion MOVA ViAX 500 | Image: Xataka The Mova VIAX 500 is a robotic lawnmower that I could recommend to any of my neighbors, who have gardens similar … Read more

Japan has had enough of tourists littering the streets. So he has started to control them with police and fines

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No matter which guide you use, surely if you are looking for the iconic places in Japan, Shibuya, one of the districts, will be among them. more dynamic from Tokyo. The neighborhood is known for its neon lights, its skyline and (above all) its famous intersection. Shibuya sukuranburu kōsatenthrough which thousands of tourists pass every day. If you search on TikTok for #sibuyacrossing you will find more than 70,000 videosthe majority of foreigners. Local authorities have grown tired of these crowds leaving their streets. full of garbage and has decided cut to the chase. As? With special patrols and sanctions. What has happened? That the government of the Shibuya district, in Tokyo, wants to get rid of people who throw garbage in its streets. And he has decided to do it the most effective way (and emphatically) possible: using the police and with sanctions that will be imposed on the spot and offenders must pay either in cash, with a credit card or by means of a QR code. It is not a more or less diffuse idea or a political proposal that still needs to be debated and processed. The measure has already been introduced as an amendment in the ordinance for the ‘Joint Creation of a Clean Shibuya’, a rule from 1997. Now, and after a grace period that began in April, the authorities have begun to issue fines. They have even promoted a campaign with a name that leaves little room for interpretation: “If you throw garbage, you lose money”. Proof of how seriously the police take it is that only on their first day did they process a dozen of sanctions. What fines and how are they applied? The fines amount to 2,000 yenabout 10.7 euros, and will be applied immediately so that offenders can pay them in cash or by pulling a card. As if the threat of sanctions were not enough, the district has decided to mobilize a patrol of several dozen agents (up to 50) who will be in charge of exploring the area in search of offenders. As the objective is to eliminate dirt, the focus has not only been placed on pedestrians. The same rule contemplates fines of 50,000 yen (270 euros) for positions takeaway or vending machines that do not install trash cans nearby. Is the problem so serious? No data has been released on the amount of garbage that is collected every day on the streets of Shibuya, but there are several characteristics in the area that explain why the government has decided to resort to fines. The first is that public containers are not plentiful. In 2013 the authorities they withdrew bins and encouraged people to manage their waste responsibly. The idea was not only to avoid collapsed bins, but, as remember the BBCimprove security. In general, in the country it is not strange to find areas in which containers are scarce for fear that they will be used in terrorist attacks. This lack of buckets has not gone unnoticed by the millions of tourists who visit the country each year. In 2025 the issue appeared in a government survey on the problems faced by foreign tourists. He was cited by 20% of the respondents. Is it the only explanation? No. Shibuya is an important (and above all busy) tourist hub. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), during peak hours between 1,000 and 2,500 People cross its famous intersection every two minutes. “It is one of the most emblematic places in Tokyo,” the agency points out before remembering that just with the number of people who accumulate there, including residents and visitors, a stadium could be filled in a short time. Although slightly less than 250,000 peoplethis avalanche of passers-by is much better understood if we take into account that Japan has been experiencing an authentic tourist boom. It is estimated that only last year they visited the country 42.7 million of foreigners, a relevant figure for three reasons: it represents a year-on-year increase of almost 16%, it is the first time that the figure exceeds 40 million and, above all, it marks a historical record. Fines only for tourists? No. Fines for littering the ground apply to both visitors and local people, although it is not unreasonable to think that the measure has been adopted largely with foreigners in mind. And not only because it is centered on a tourist hub. The sanctions are immediate, they can be paid with a card or a QR and the agents in charge of enforcing the rule will speak several languagesincluding English, Chinese and Korean. “Shibuya is an international area visited by many Japanese and people from all over the world. We ask all visitors, regardless of nationality, to respect the city’s rules,” underlines Ken Hasebe, district leader. The authorities conduct a survey, carried out last year, which shows that 52% of the people hunted for littering were foreigners. Does it only happen there? No. Shibuya is not the only point in Japan where the tourist avalanche has generated tensions with the local population. In fact, you don’t have to go back very far in time to find two other towns that also decided to adopt measures to avoid the overcrowding, dirt and traffic problems generated by tourism. One is Fujikawaguchiko, which in 2024 installed a barrier to cover your views of Mount Fuji. The reason? The hordes of tourists seeking selfie perfect. The other is Fujiyoshida, who recently canceled their festival of the cherry blossom to save the neighbors the inconvenience caused by the thousands of foreigners that the event attracts. The country even has decided to charge for the ascent of Fuji to prevent it from becoming a huge public landfill. Images |Timo Volz (Unsplash) and Jezael Melgoza (Unsplash) In Xataka | Antarctica was practically the last corner of the Earth immune to touristification. That’s ending

The biggest mistake you can make the night before the Selectivity exam is not leaving a topic unlooked at: it is not sleeping

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When we think of a student during exam time or of a candidate who is preparing very intensely for an exam that will offer him job stability, we automatically think of the classic image of being up early in the morning studying hundreds of underlined pages. Here it seems that sleeping becomes a minor issue due to the fact of studying and cramming hundreds of pages. But the reality is that study without sleeping It’s like wasting time, even though it may seem otherwise. The science. Here the science has a lot to sayand a robust body of evidence suggests that putting aside studying and getting into bed for 7 or 8 hours of sleep is by far the smartest decision you can make before an exam or during preparation. And something they don’t teach us is that studying is only half of the learning and memorization process that occurs in our brain, since the other half occurs while we are asleep in order to ingrain knowledge. In the brain. To understand why sleep is non-negotiable for students, we have to look at what happens inside our heads when we sleep. At these moments we may think that the brain is in a state of lethargy or shutdown, but the truth is that it is a period of frenetic activity at the neuronal level. We found one of the proofs in a published article in Neuron which suggests that the sleeping brain is biologically optimized for memory consolidation. Something very important, because during the day the brain acts like a true sponge, capturing a large amount of information quickly but volatile, which far exceeds the limit of its capacity to retain it. Transferring it to the hard drive. All this knowledge that we try to acquire in one afternoon has to be consolidated so that we can later remember it in the exam. This is where sleep comes in, which is where a hippocampal-cortical transferwhich allows the information acquired during wakefulness to be reactivated and transferred to the cerebral cortex, which is where the information is stored long-term. In Nature We found a fascinating article that detailed how neurons repeat at full speed the information learned during the first phase of sleep. This phase prepares the ground so that, during REM sleep, in the second half of sleep, synaptic connections are stabilized and strengthened to integrate all the information. But if we skip hours of sleep, or reduce it to 3-4 hours to be more efficient, this process is interrupted. The disaster of sleep deprivation. The penalty for not sleeping is severe, since if you decide to spend the night sleepless to review “a couple more topics”, you should know that the price you have to pay is a 40% reduction in learning capacity, in addition to an increase in memory losses and a plummet in concentration. And what these losses ultimately generate are temporary memory gaps, which is the typical situation in which we remain “blank” looking at the exam sheet without knowing what to write, although you remember having read it hours before. This is why a student with few hours of sleep shows much slower response times, is confused when making decisions, and suffers a radical worsening of attention. In surveys. In 2023, a study carried out with 640 students of the Autonomous University of Madrid during their exam period pointed out that 61.3% of those surveyed already sensed that their performance would improve if they slept more. From here, the researchers confirmed a direct and positive association between sleep quality and academic performance. Furthermore, they discovered that the “sleep debt” accumulated during the week took a very high toll, being associated with worse performance perceived by the students themselves. The perfect dose. Here the recommendation that we must keep in mind is that of the WHO or the National Sleep Foundation, which suggests that young adults should sleep between 7 and 8 hours a day, and even increase to 9 hours for students with great cognitive stress, such as opponents. Images | Ministry of Health In Xataka | If you wake up tired on a regular basis, your rest is fragmented. The good news is that science knows how to fix it

five laptops on sale at ASUS Weeks

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With how difficult it is nowadays to ride a PC for parts (in part, because of the price of RAM), laptops have an advantage. The difficult thing perhaps is choosing one that suits our budget and our needs, since not all of us are looking for the same thing. Are you looking for a new team? Well, don’t lose sight of the ASUS Weekswhere we have a lot of laptops (and more devices or components) with quite interesting discounts. In this promo, available until next June 14we can find discounts of up to 69%. There is a lot to choose from, but we have selected five laptops that we find especially interesting: ASUS Zenbook DUO by 1,899.99 eurosa very versatile laptop that has two OLED touch screens. ASUS ProArt P16 by 4,099 eurosa laptop designed for professionals with 64 GB of DDR5 RAM and an RTX 5080. ASUS ROG Strix G18 by 2,449.99 eurosdesigned for demanding players thanks to its RTX 5070 Ti. ASUS TUF Gaming A16 by 1,249.99 eurosa cheaper gaming laptop that has great value for money. ASUS ExpertBook P5 by 1,029 euros– Lightweight, 14-inch laptop that’s perfect for working or studying. ASUS Zenbook DUO The first of the laptops that we bring you is this Zenbook DUO, a very special device that has two 14-inch OLED screens. This is very useful in terms of productivity, since it allows you to have a larger workspace. In addition, it has a detachable full-size keyboard and a stand for the screens. In terms of components, the truth is that it is a powerful device designed to perform at a high level for years. It has an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H processor along with 32 GB of LPDDR5x type RAMas well as 1 TB of storage in the form of SSD. Its current price is 1,899.99 eurossince it has a discount of 100 euros in ASUS Weeks. ASUS Zenbook DUO (UX8406) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS ProArt P16 At ASUS Weeks we can also find equipment very oriented towards the professional world and the most demanding users. This ProArt 16 is a very clear example of this, since we are faced with a laptop with a top spec list: uses a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 64 GB of LPDDR5x RAM and an RTX 5080. In addition to this, it also mounts ora very good 16-inch OLED touch screen with 120 Hz and WQUXGA resolution (3840 x 2400 pixels). To all this we must add a series of very interesting ASUS tools, such as Muse Tree or StoryCube. Its RRP is 4,499 euros, but it is available for 4,099 euros. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS ROG Strix G18 There are many gaming options in these ASUS Weeks. The first of the two that we bring you is this ASUS ROG Strix G18, a laptop designed for enthusiastic gamers looking for very high performance even at 1440p. As a graph, mount one of the most balanced from NVIDIA: the RTX 5070 Ti. In addition to this, it also has a good processor such as the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and an 18-inch IPS screen with 240 Hz and anti-reflective technology. All this makes it a laptop designed to play now and for many years at a good level and with DLSS 4.5. Its RRP is 2,799 euros, but we can get it for 2,449.99 euros. And it comes with the new and long-awaited ‘007 First Light’ as a gift. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS TUF Gaming A16 Are you looking for a more affordable gaming laptop? Then perhaps this ASUS TUF Gaming A16 is more suitable for you, which is now available for 1,249.99 euros (instead of the 1,499 euros it usually costs). Despite being cheaper than the previous one, it is still a very interesting option that comes with an RTX 5060, a graphics card that is also still compatible with NVIDIA’s DLSS 4.5. To all of the above, we must add a Ryzen 7 260 processor, 32GB DDR5 RAM and 1 TB of SSD. Its screen in this case is 16 inches and has a 1920×1200 resolution, but it still has a good 120 Hz refresh rate. Like the previous one, it also includes the new ‘James Bond’ game as a gift. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links ASUS ExpertBook P5 To finish this selection of laptops, we have this ExpertBook P5. It is a device designed to work or study, but also to be very easy to transport everywhere with us. Despite having a metal chassis, It barely weighs 1.29 kgso you won’t have to carry a contraption with you every time you go to the office or university. And how are the specifications? Well, it’s not bad at all: it has an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and a 14-inch screen with 2.5K resolution and a refresh rate of 144 Hz. It has a discount right now of 90 euros compared to its usual price: it costs 1,029 euros. ASUS ExpertBook P5 (P5405) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | ASUS In Xataka | Best laptops in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models In Xataka | What is the best laptop for working in 2026. Tips and recommendations

Emilia Clarke talks about her work in Marvel, Star Wars and Terminator: “it should never have happened”

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In one recent interviewEmilia Clarke reviewed her post-‘Game of Thrones’ career with unusual frankness. About ‘Secret Invasion’ he said: “I don’t think anyone liked the series.” On ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’: “The viewers were not happy either.” On ‘Terminator: Genisys’: “It should never have happened.” He adds: “But they were jobs I said yes to. I joined franchises that were already big and established. That’s why I don’t take it personally.” It is difficult to find a better summary of how the big franchise business works in Hollywood. Some collections. Let’s see if Clarke’s feeling that they were failures is accompanied by data. ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ cost between 275 and 300 million dollars and raised 393 million worldwide. According to is calculatedDisney lost about $77 million on the film, making it Star Wars’ first commercial failure. ‘Secret Invasion’ had a production cost of 211.6 million dollars, a figure known thanks to the transparency demands of the UK tax incentive program, where it was filmed. More than ‘Barbie’ or ‘Oppenheimer’ cost that same year. Viewership figures on Disney+ in its first five days were the second lowest of any MCU production, only above ‘Ms. Marvel’. Critical reception was equally poor. Regarding ‘Terminator: Genesis’, 155 million budget, collection insufficient to justify sequels that had already been announced, and weak reviews. It’s not the first. In 2021, with the MCU still dominating the box office, Anthony Hopkins summarized his experience in the ‘Thor’ trilogy, between 2011 and 2017: “They put armor on me and gave me a beard. Sit on the throne, shout a little. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s acting in front of nothing.” Chris Hemsworth came to similar conclusions: recognized that in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder‘ “I got stuck improvising and clowning around, and became a parody of myself.” This time, critics and the public accompanied him in doubts. Hemsworth has described the dynamic that he calls “the curse of the superhero,” which is simply that “you get pigeonholed.” But at the same time he rejects the attitude of actors like Clarke, who criticize Marvel when their projects don’t work: “They are successful movies: put me in one. Mine doesn’t work? Well, I attack them all.” What Clarke is really saying. The heart of Clarke’s complaint is that major franchises operate as hiring machines that offer global visibility and financial rewards that few independent productions match. In return, the actor’s creative control over the result is minimal. Clarke said in the same interview that in ‘Game of Thrones’ she received the scripts and did “everything in my power to understand and empathize with the decisions.” This was not the case in later franchises. Not just Marvel. The pattern is not exclusive to a single franchise. When actress Jamie Lee Curtis rejected in 2022 participate in Marvel projects, he did so with the same type of argument as Hopkins: “they will stick stitches in my body and force me to perform in some warehouse.” What does seem to be clear and Clarke demonstrates is that when there is a commercial failure, actors seem to feel freer to point out the obvious shortcomings of a system in which they are just more meat for the content grinder. In Xataka | I have detected the exact moment in which things at Marvel began to fail and that culminated in ‘Captain America’

AI is destroying jobs, and creating others too: $2,000 to masturbate

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AI not only is putting jobs at risk, He is also inventing others as unusual as they are disturbing. While some positions are shaky and others gain valuea company that sells virtual companions has taken an even stranger step: It has posted an offer to hire a “masturbation consultant.” It’s no joke, and it’s pretty well paid. The offer. Joi AI is a company that sells AI companions, similar to Replika either Character.aiand is working on a new adult audio feature. In order to evaluate your new product, They were looking for ten masturbation consultants They could test the feature for four weeks and conduct daily audio-guided sessions and then submit short weekly reports on their experience. The only requirement was to be over 18 years old and the salary was $2,000. What happened next will surprise no one. massive response We speak in the past tense because the offer has already been withdrawn. The flood of requests caused the link to the offer to break and, in just a few days, the company received no less than 100,000 applications for just ten positions, that is, 10,000 candidates per position. In statements to Business InsiderJulie Levin, Head of Communications at Joi AI, said “What are we supposed to do with 100,000 applications? I should probably call them winners, because it’s a very close competition.” The majority of candidates were young men between 20 and 30 years old. The business of artificial intimacy. Joi AI is one of many applications that are monetizing something that has been happening for a long time: that Humans are establishing relationships with AIs. The company already has 70 employees, has raised about $4 million in financing and boasts more than one million monthly active users worldwide. There are even more popular apps like the aforementioned Replika, which has two million active users. Joi AI falls into a subcategory of apps more oriented towards sexual content, which also includes the case of OhChat, a kind of virtual OnlyFans where Retired porn actresses continue working in the form of virtual avatars. As for price, all of these apps offer different subscription levels. It is striking that Joi AI offers a hybrid model between subscription and payment for tokens: for $13.99 per month they give you 1,000 coins and, if they run out, you can buy more. Aggressive marketing. Joi AI assured that the offer was real, but the suspicion that it may be all part of a marketing campaign is there. After the offer was published, the company was sharing some responses from the candidates to the question “What do you hope to learn about yourself?”, in a clear attempt to gain virality. Be that as it may, what is clear is that the company has a very aggressive marketing strategy; They sell themselves as an ‘ai-lationships’ platform and on their website they declare themselves enemies of dating apps. “We oppose that stressful and frustrating dating app experience that leaves people feeling hurt, insecure and alone (…) Joi AI is the antidote to everything dating apps have forgotten: authentic connection, real freedom and zero nonsense.” And they stay so wide. The dark side of artificial relationships. As these types of ‘AI companion’ services become popular, the risks they pose to our mental health are being questioned. we live an epidemic of loneliness, but it is increasingly clear to us that using AI to replace human relationships poses more problems than benefits. Far from curing isolation, studies have seen that regular use causes just the opposite effect, making us feel lonelier and more depressed. In this sense, Joi AI being sold as “authentic connection” and a cure for loneliness seems anything but honest. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | People Blaming ChatGPT for Causing Delusions and Suicides: What’s Really Happening with AI and Mental Health

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