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It took eight months for the French Academy to bring Jim Carrey to Paris. It took the Internet eight hours to decide that it wasn’t him

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On February 26, Jim Carrey received a prestigious Honorary César for his entire career in Paris, after years of semi-retirement. But what was born as a touching emotional tribute at the center of a conspiracy theory: was it really him who took the stage, or an impersonator with prosthetics? The story of how an Instagram post unleashed chaos (and how it ended up being denied). A tribute. Jim Carrey has received this year’s Honorary César: the French Oscars rewarded his “exceptional versatility” with an award that Julia Roberts, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher had already received. It also arrived at a time when Carrey’s career was at a peculiar point: in 2022, at the press conference for ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ he announced that he retired. But he came back three years later. with brutal honesty: “I have bought many things and I need the money“Frankly.” Therefore, Carrey arrived in Paris after a false retirement that had made him partially disappear, yes, from the red carpets and premieres. And now he was on the most elegant stage in European cinema. He had not disappeared from the public light, however: in November, had been seen at Soundgarden’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles. But his appearances have always been, in recent years, spaced out in time and without warning. The delivery. The first unexpected moment of the night came when Carrey, after being introduced by Michel Gondry, and with an aesthetic that left behind the lush beard of recent years, gave the acceptance speech completely in French. The accent was unmistakably American, but it was very worked. As Gregory Caulier, general delegate of the Caesars, would later reveal, I had prepared it for months. In it revealed a connection with France that no one knew: his ancestor Marc-François Carré (the family’s original surname before Anglicization) was born in Saint-Malo and, from there, emigrated to Canada The change. In fact, already at the aforementioned Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony its appearance It had aroused some surprise: it already had the aesthetic that it repeated at the Césars, with shoulder-length hair and slightly different facial features than usual. The first speculations pointed to the cosmetic surgery as a possible reason and some experts on the subject speculated about what those interventions could have been. Dr. Millicent Rovelo speak of an upper blepharoplasty (to remove excess skin from the upper eyelids) and a significant volume of Botox on the forehead. Another surgeon, Dr. John Diaz pointed out to a possible cervical tightening procedure. The very media Dr. Tony Youn pointed out signs of an endoscopic brow lift that would explain the slight displacement of the hairline. and joined the hypothesis of blepharoplasty and Botox. Finally, Dr. Raffi Hovsepian, dissented: The changes in the forehead and eye area seemed compatible with natural male aging, without surgical evidence. Let’s not forget that in 2003, Carrey appeared at the Teen Choice Awards completely blindfolded, wearing sunglasses, pretending to come out of surgery. By then rumors arose about the tweaks to his physique. The mask artist. Four days after the ceremony, Alexis Stone posted a carousel of three images on Instagram. The first two featured Jim Carrey. The third was a latex mask, false teeth, a dark wig, and various makeup materials arranged on a table with the Eiffel Tower out of focus in the background. The caption was simply “Alexis Stone as Jim Carrey in Paris.” Stone is a self-taught effects designer who has built a career on hyperrealistic transformations that have allowed her to pass herself off as Madonna, Jack NicholsonLana Del Rey, Robin Williams’ Ms. Doubtfire or Glenn Close’s Cruella de Vil. Stone usually documents his process in detail, but this was not the case: we only saw a mask that even had details that some users saw themselves as belonging to an AI generationwith excessively perfect contours and a blurry background typical of synthetic images. but when famous like Megan Fox or Katy Perry spread Stone’s posts, the rumor germinated all over the internet: the Césars were not Jim Carrey, but an imposter. Because. The arguments that the conspiracy theorists maintained They appeared almost at the same time as the gala. For example, the color of the eyes, usually dark brown, here a more greenish tone. More: Carrey is left-handed, and several short videos showed him in Paris using his right hand to sign autographs. The third argument was the speech itself: that someone who was theoretically retired and had no active ties to France spoke for ten minutes in French with very elaborate pronunciation, it was, for a part of the public, tremendously suspicious. The interviews that prove it. Of course, this is the moment that conspiracy theorists have been waiting for to bring up interviews from Carrey’s past with ambiguous, philosophical or downright incomprehensible answers. In 2017 declared that he did not believe in personalities, that the fashion party he had gone to and at which he was being interviewed seemed to him “absolutely meaningless” (from a metaphysical point of view) and that “there is no self, there are only things happening” (later the actor himself I would rate the interview “existential experiment”). In a previous interview, he calmly said “I’m dead“, but it was in the context of a conversation about spirituality and ego. We recommend fans of the most disconcerting Carrey to check out the incredible documentary ‘Jim and Andy’, which documents his literal transformation into Andy Kaufman for the filming of ‘Man on the Moon’. Official confirmation. The first official statements came from Marleah Leslie, Jim Carrey’s publicist for decades, with a brief message and that left no room for doubt: “Jim Carrey attended the César Awards, where he accepted his Honorary César Award.” That same day, the aforementioned Gregory Caulier told Variety what the eight months of preparatory conversations had been like and the months that the actor dedicated to working on his French. Carrey went to Paris accompanied by … Read more

Tesla aspired to bring the automobile industry to its knees. Now the auto industry is giving it back

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Tesla has been held accountable to investors. His 2025 numbers have been bad. Pretty bad, in fact. So much so that it has confirmed the almost immediate cessation of the Tesla Model S and Model X, the cars that helped popularize the brand but whose sales are already minimal. It will make robots instead. It is confirmation of a much deeper problem. Bye. Elon Musk confirmed it a few days ago. Tesla will stop manufacturing its most expensive vehicles. The Freemont factory, where the company produces the Tesla Model S and Model will start producing humanoid robots Optimus. Without just a very sentimental message, as usually happens in the motor industrythe CEO of Tesla has practically treated these models as mere employees. The farewell is similar to that given to the classic worker who ends up at the exit door with a cardboard box in his hands to carry a photo of his children, three pens and the stapler that the company refused to buy. I can almost see the sleeve of the sweater sticking out and the shirt half removed from the pants. Deeper. Stopping production of its most expensive electric cars, no matter how few they sold, points to Tesla having a deeper problem: it wanted to reconvert the automobile industry. And, over the years, the automobile industry seems to be beating the company. To understand what we are talking about, we must take into account different variables: how Tesla carved out a niche for itself in the market, how it revolutionized automobile production and how that same revolution has put a back on the backpack that is becoming more complicated to handle every day. And, of course, how it is facing the same problems as every other automaker. His emergence. Building a car brand from scratch is complicated. Almost impossible, as many Chinese companies are experiencing firsthand. Tesla was born in 2003 and It wasn’t until 2020 when it was profitable each and every quarter of the same year. It was thanks to the sale of emissions credits and bitcoins. It wouldn’t be until later when it became profitable on its own selling electric cars. In those 17 years, the company was sustained with the help of investors, partnerships with companies like Toyota and aid from the United States Government. And if they managed to keep losing money for almost two decades, it was because they promised a differential technology, something that only they could deliver at that time. A groundbreaking vehicle for what was on the market. Aspirational. Tesla became an aspirational company. He Tesla Roadster (the only one that has existed so far) walked all over Hollywood and later the Tesla Model S and Model X they became neck-turning vehicles of worship. I still remember the first time I saw a Tesla store in Amsterdam and how that huge vertical screen in the sedan It attracted the attention of all of us who were there sightseeing. Both cars were confirmation that a company could put an electric car on the street with an autonomy that allowed travel, with a striking aesthetic at that time and unbridled power compared to combustion cars. It was a desirable brand, a status symbol. Millions of copies. The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y They were the next step. The key to making Tesla a profitable company on its own was to sell millions of copies. To put an “affordable” electric car on the road or, at least, much cheaper than the competition with equal benefits, Tesla showed off its Gigapress. This machine allows you to create huge body parts, much larger than competing machines. This allows Tesla to produce faster and at a lower cost. But it has a problem: it needs millions and millions of copies to make it profitable and take advantage of it. Each profound change in the part to be produced forces very long development times and excessively extended technical stops. Furthermore, it is not easy to create that first original piece. Disadvantages that have forced the design of Tesla cars to remain practically unchanged. Too seen. Being a slave to design is a problem in the automobile industry. Tesla thought it could sell the same car for years or decades, but time is telling it that customers like to see new things. When someone spends tens of thousands of euros on a car, they like it to look fresh and new. The purchase of a car is still marked by irrational and passionate concepts above all logic. A car, no matter how much it is sold like that, is not a mobile phone. It’s not a black turtleneck either. These are products that, with a perfected and standardized design, differ little from each other without being fashionable. But above all, they are products with a rapid renewal rate. The car, if all goes well, will be in our house for more than a decade, which is why we like to buy the latest things within our budget. Millions of copies of the Tesla Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model with hardly any renovations they have diluted its novel image. Their cars have an aesthetic designed not to go out of style quickly but the customer needs to put new things in their mouths every so often. That is why generations in the automobile industry last between six and eight years, with a more or less profound renewal in the middle of the commercial life to boost sales again. And the competition tightens. Tesla thought he could turn the automobile into another consumer good. Elon Musk even promised sales of 20 million units per year. An outrage if we take into account that it is doubling the production of Toyota, the largest manufacturer in the world. This would be possible (and with many doubts) if its competitive advantage was so overwhelming that it left its cars in a position years ahead of the competition. But if we have seen anything since 2020, … Read more

bring 30,000 drivers from Türkiye

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The road transport sector in Spain faces a serious generational change problem which puts the movement of goods at risk. Logistics companies are looking for creative ways to keep everything moving. A recent initiative promises change this trend and import talent from another country with many more professionals available: Türkiye. Spain runs out of drivers. Spain has more than 30,000 jobs for truck drivers that it cannot meet, a demand that represents almost 10% of the sector’s total workforce, made up of some 390,000 professionals. These vacancies complicate the daily operations of companies, which struggle to find enough hands to maintain their supply routes. Far from being a “temporary blip”, the sector is experiencing a progressive aging of its staff, and the majority of current drivers are between 45 and 55 years old. A third of them will retire in the next 10 years and there is no generational replacement to take their place. Only 5% of Spanish truck drivers are under 25 years old, which shows the lack of generational change in this demanding profession. The agreement with Türkiye. In this context, the Andalusian transport association Usintra and the Córdoba Campus Foundation they have reached an agreement collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security of Türkiye with the aim of recruiting drivers in that country who are willing to come to work in Spain. ​In Türkiye there are more than 300,000 truck drivers looking for work, a figure that contrasts with the shortage of drivers that Spain suffers and opens the door to a practical solution. The objective is for the General Directorate of the Turkish Employment Agency to select these professionals in Turkey, and bring the candidates to Spain to fill the vacancies in Spanish logistics companies. Homologation of permits. Drivers recruited in Türkiye will receive additional training at the Córdoba FP Campus in order to approve the necessary permits to transport goods in Spain and they will learn Spanish. During all this training time, the entities involved will offer them accommodation and food. Afterwards, their documents will be legalized so that they can start working in logistics companies in Spain. Search for talent in Spain. In addition to looking outside, the government has launched the Reconduce Planin which 500,000 euros will be allocated for subsidies of up to 3,000 euros per person to finance and encourage courses and exams to obtain the necessary permits to be a truck driver and transport goods. A measure that from the sector is considered insufficient to alleviate the personnel deficit and the serious problem of generational change that the sector is suffering, greatly affected by the low salary and long hours away from home. The Community of Madrid offers free training for the Certificate of Professional Aptitude (CAP) with 6.48 million euros between 2026 and 2027, aimed at those over 21 years of age with a B card, to train about 1,200 applicants. In Xataka | That Japan has 100,000 people over 100 years old explains a problem: they are literally running out of drivers. Image | Unsplash (Gabriel Santos)

“During the process with Amazon we did not bring innovation to the market for 18 months”

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There’s something liberating about talking to someone who doesn’t have to defend decisions they didn’t make. Gary Cohen He came to iRobot in 2024 to be its CEO when the founder, Colin Angle, He jumped ship after the collapse of the deal with Amazon. Now, more than a year later, from an office in Bedford where he has just renewed his lease – a gesture of permanence in the midst of chaos – he has spoken to Xataka with the frankness of who has had to choose between dignified death and pragmatic survival. “My goal is to make Colin proud,” he says of the departed founder. “He calls it ‘his baby.’ I want to make him feel like we were able to turn this company around.” It’s a curious statement coming from who just sold that baby to Picea Roboticsthe Chinese manufacturer that will now own the company that invented the home robot vacuum cleaner. Dead in the closet At one point in the conversation, Cohen drops an image that sticks: “I have hundreds of dead lawnmower robots in this building.” It refers to Terra project, iRobot’s failed attempt to expand beyond vacuum cleaners. These technological corpses are the perfect metaphor for a company that was ahead of the market… but did not know how to convert that advantage into products that arrived on time. Original sin was go all in on elegant but impractical technology. Colin Angle, a brilliant roboticist at MIT, insisted on camera-based navigation as Chinese competitors adopted LiDAR. Exactly the same as Tesla’s approach to Chinese cars, by the way. “Consumers want to map their homes in twenty minutes, not two hours,” Cohen explains with the wisdom of someone who comes from selling razors at Gillette, not robots. Two hundred software engineers worked at Machine Learning to make that vision work. Meanwhile, companies like Ecovacs or Roborock were overtaking them from the right with cheaper products and, to iRobot’s pain, technologically superior according to many customers. “During the period with Amazon, the management team took its foot off the gas and we didn’t bring innovation to market for about 18 months.” This confession about the 18 months of paralysis while they waited the approval of the sale to Amazon for 1.7 billion It’s devastating. The company was frozen, unable to react as the market moved at Chinese speed. It was not until the last year, already working with Picea, when iRobot incorporated LiDAR into its range. When European regulators ended up blocking the operation to “protect competition,” anddestiny was sealed. The irony hurts: those European regulators prevented an American company from buying another American company, and the result is that it has ended up being absorbed by a Chinese company that played its cards well. When I point out this paradox, Cohen responds cautiously and diplomatically: “This was not a hostile takeover. We went to them.” The creditor’s embrace The relationship with Picea began like many dependency relationships: out of necessity. iRobot I owed them 161 million in manufacturing costs when Cohen took over. They needed to completely reinvent themselves, and they needed to do it quickly. In less than a year they launched eight new models“finally giving the people what they wanted, including LiDAR navigation and scrubbing combo products.” But the final blow came from the tariffs. 46% on imports from Vietnamwhere they manufacture for the US market. $23 million extra in costs in 2025 alone. “Some potential buyers looked at our business and said ‘we don’t want to take risks until the tariff situation is resolved.’” The candidates evaporated one by one. When the last potential buyer couldn’t close the deal, Cohen made the pragmatic decision. “We told Picea: you have a great partnership with us, why don’t you buy from us?” And in one month they closed the deal that turns the supplier, creditor and competitor, all in onein owner. The promise of continuity “Is business as usual. iRobot is here to stay. “We don’t expect any disruption.” Cohen insists Roombas will continue to work, apps will maintain their service and support will continue. For the millions of users (in Spain, where “Roomba” has become as synonymous with a robot vacuum cleaner as “Kleenex” is with a handkerchief) this is the only thing that matters. The offices will remain: Bedford, Tokyo, Madrid, London. Or so the CEO claims. The MIT engineers who form the ‘iRobot Labs’ will continue working. “We have intellectual property that we contribute. They have patents. Together we will be able to differentiate products much more.” The official narrative is optimistic because think about the perfect marriage between American innovation and Chinese efficiency. But when I ask how much of the new product line was actually developed by iRobot, the answer says a lot without saying, “It’s been a partnership.” The most innovative features, such as the compactor container wave retractable scrub roller coverwere developed by Picea. The value of being late “You have to treat every day as if you were second or third, not as if you were first.” It is the advice that Cohen would give to technology entrepreneurs, born from his experience at Gillette when they had 60% of the market but acted as challengers. At some point, iRobot forgot that lesson between its IPO in 2005 and its forced sale for a fraction of its peak value. “My goal,” Cohen says near the end, “is to make customers like your mother happy.” You are referring to my comment about how difficult it was for my mother to set up her Roomba. It’s a modest promise for a company that dreamed of revolutionizing domestic robotics, but maybe realism is exactly what they need now. There is something moving about Cohen defending a company he didn’t build, trying to save half a thousand jobs, promising to honor the legacy of a founder who is no longer here. “Colin was a visionary,” he says, then honestly adds that they couldn’t execute that vision. The future has a … Read more

The real deal about festivals isn’t the music, it’s that you can’t bring your own food in. But that’s over

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The sentence of Valencia Court against Madrid Salvaje It’s not just about snacks. It is an assault won by consumers in a larger war: that of maintaining cultural experiences without every moment being designed for the purchase and sale of services. A ray of hope in the battle between “leisure as a business” as opposed to “leisure as a social right” that defines our era in an increasingly clear way. The battle for free entertainment. The judgmentwhich comes after the lawsuit from FACUA-Consumers in Action, is the first judicial resolution in Spain which establishes the abusive nature of these prohibitions at music festivals. But its importance transcends the anecdotal, since what is at stake is not only the right to bring a sandwich to a concert, but something more structural: the battle to maintain cultural spaces that are not completely immersed in transactional dynamics. A chronology of victories. A series of rulings can be traced that serve as a preamble to this latest judicial decision and that have paved the way to reach this point. For example, in 2001the María Cristina multiplexes in Toledo lost a lawsuit that certified that prohibiting entry with external products was an “irrational restriction on the consumer’s ability to choose.” There was already talk of “tied sales”: indirectly imposing services that the client had not requested. In 2022 another milestone arrived: the law was enacted that requires all hospitality establishments to offer free tap water. Although the official justification was environmental (reducing single-use packaging), it also served as a basis for this issue of forced consumption. Since then, the fines have increased: Yelmo Cines, for example, was fined 30,001 euros by the Basque Consumer Institute for prohibiting food from abroad. Spanish legal doctrine already makes it clear: if the main activity is showing films or scheduling concerts, hospitality is accessory. Beyond the sandwich. What happens at festivals is a symptom of a deeper mutation: leisure is being colonized by logic that transforms the cultural experience into a financial asset. It is understood if we look at the case of Live Nation, owners of Ticketmaster. In 2024, US Attorney General Merrick Garland defined like this the business model: “Live Nation uses illegal anti-competitive conduct to exert monopolistic control over the live events industry at the expense of fans, artists, small promoters and venue operators.” That is: you control the 70% of the ticketing market in the United States60% of concert promotion, and exclusive contracts with 75% of the large venues (the numbers are comparable in other countries of the world). In this way, each business segment feeds and reinforces the others. Ticket revenue is used to tie artists into exclusive promotional contracts, allowing for long-term ticketing exclusives, with more commission income… and perpetuating itself ad infinitum. By controlling the entire distribution and business chain you earn more money. Parallel trends. This transformation of leisure does not come from nowhere. It is intertwined with a couple of trends that redefine current leisure. On the one hand, the shrinkflation cultural (untranslatable, but here it goes: shrinking inflation), reduce the size of the product while maintaining or even increasing the price. General admission prices to American festivals they rose 55% between 2014 and 2024. And it’s not just that it costs more: it’s that you receive less. What was once included (being able to bring your own food, access to free drinking water, reasonable personal space) is now sold as a “privilege” or outright prohibited. Furthermore, in 2006, Spirit Airlines introduced the “unbundling” model: a cheap ticket that only includes one seat. Luggage, seat selection and priority boarding became extras that, as in 2024 had generated billions of dollars in baggage and seat selection fees. In other words: the unbundling did not reduce the cost of flying, but rather fragmented the final price into multiple hidden charges. Because ultra-low-cost airlines operate with very tight margins in base notes, recovering profitability through peaks that represent up to 47% of income. Festivals follow the same recipe: tickets that barely cover fixed expenses, while the real margins come from drinks and food. And since now live performances are essential for the survival of the music industryit makes sense that all efforts are focused on making it profitable. A crucial moment. After decades of unstoppable advance in the commodification of every aspect of entertainment (from cinema to sports stadiums, passing through theme parks), this judicial ruling indicates that perhaps the pendulum is beginning to swing in the opposite direction, at least in certain details. Consumers may not have completely lost the battle for “leisure as leisure” to the relentless “leisure as business” model that has been theorized for decades (Joseph Pine and James Gilmore spoke in 1998 of“the experience economy” and, even further back, the German sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer once defined visionary “colonization of free time) Extirpating leisure from capitalism. In 1944, the political economist Karl Polanyi published ‘The Great Transformation’where he argued that land, work and money are essential elements of life that They should never have become commodities. When the market attempts to subordinate “the very substance of society to the laws of the market,” society reacts spontaneously to protect itself from its own disintegration. So this judicial resolution is about being able to enter the next MadCool with a sandwich, but also about something more. Header | James Jeremy Beckers in Unsplash

It is now legal to bring your own food and drink into festivals

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It is a battle for consumer rights that is receiving very notable attention, and there is nothing strange about it: it affects some of the most widespread forms of leisure, cinema and concerts, and at stake is the right of customers to bring drinks and food into the venues. FACUA has been filing complaints against cinemas and event organizers for years and today we have a resolution that could set a precedent that changes everything. What has happened? The Court of First Instance number 4 of Valencia has issued the first ruling in Spain declaring null and void the clauses of a festival that prohibited access to the venue with food and drinks purchased abroad. The judicial resolution affects the Madrid Salvaje festival, and considers these restrictions as abusive practices that violate consumer rights as reported by FACUAthe association that filed the lawsuit. The ruling also annuls the charge of three euros as “management expenses” that the organization applied to attendees who wanted to recover the unconsumed balance on the bracelets. cashless. The court expressly prohibits the promoter to reiterate these practices in future events and thus establishes a precedent that could affect future editions of festivals in Spain. Because. The sentence justify your decision in the impossibility of attendees doing without food during the long days that the festivals last. The magistrate emphasizes that requiring users to leave the premises to eat would mean missing part of the scheduled concerts, in addition to generating unnecessary inconvenience. The resolution concludes that this prohibition constitutes in practice a forced imposition of hospitality services that consumers have not requested. That is, preventing entry with food from outside is equivalent to forcing the audience to purchase products exclusively in the festival’s internal establishments, which represents an “unjustified contractual imbalance.” The ruling emphasizes that the fundamental purpose of these events is to offer musical entertainment, with the restoration being a merely accessory element that should not condition the enjoyment of the main show. Repeat offenders. This is not the first time that Madrid Salvaje AIE has faced sanctions for its trade policies. The Community of Madrid has already imposed a fine of 96,000 euros for irregularities committed during the 2023 edition of the Brava Madrid festival. That sanction responded to the imposition of the system cashless as the only form of payment within the premises, without the possibility of paying in cash. In addition, the organization established a period of only seven days to claim outstanding balances. FACUA maintains active complaints against the 2024 and 2025 editions of Brava Madrid. Legal precedents: cinemas. The judicial argument of the case does not arise from nowhere, but is based on precedents established around the film sector. The Superior Court of Justice of Castilla-La Mancha established in a previous resolution that prohibiting the consumption of products according to their origin constitutes an irrational restriction of the consumer’s ability to choose. That ruling introduced the concept of “tied sales”, identifying how establishments use their dominant position to indirectly force the purchase of complementary services. The report prepared in 2016 by the then Spanish Agency for Consumer Affairs, Food Safety and Nutrition (Aecosan, today Aesan) was especially forceful when analyzing these prohibitions in movie theaters, concluding that the viewer was unjustifiably deprived of the main service they had paid for (watching the movie) when they were unilaterally imposed on them to use accessory services that they never requested, with the sale of food and drink being a secondary activity, not the essence of the movie business. The fines. These rulings regarding cinemas led to specific financial sanctions. The Basque Consumer Institute fined Yelmo Cines with 30,001 euros after a complaint from FACUA Euskadi for preventing access with external food. FACUA Galicia filed similar complaints against Cinesa in the Marineda City shopping center in A Coruña, while the Andalusian federation denounced five Yelmo establishments for repeating this policy after having been previously warned by the Junta de Andalucía in 2019. Implications. This court ruling sets a precedent of enormous relevance for the music festival industry in Spain, being the first resolution that specifically addresses these practices in events of this type. The ruling opens the door to possible retrospective claims by attendees who were affected by similar policies in past editions of Madrid Salvaje or other festivals that have maintained similar restrictions. It is an unequivocal warning about the illegality of such measures. The court decision significantly strengthens the position of consumer organizations, which have been fighting these trade policies for years. The court’s express order prohibiting Madrid Salvaje AIE from reiterating any of these clauses in future events also establishes a control mechanism that could be applied to other promoters. The cases pending resolution in courts regarding analogous situations—both in festivals and in other leisure spaces—now have a solid jurisprudential reference that will predictably influence the rulings. From now on, consumers have the right to freely choose where to purchase their food, which takes precedence over the commercial interests of the organizing companies, which redefines the relationship that existed to date between promoters and the public. Header | Colin Lloyd in Unsplash

a years-long plan to bring Steam to all devices

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Valve is executing one of the most ambitious strategies in recent software history. While Microsoft tries to convince the world that Windows on ARM is ready and Qualcomm promises raw powerGabe Newell’s company has taken a shortcut: Instead of waiting for developers to port its games, it’s funding the technology that makes that unnecessary. You want your Steam library to work on any device without anyone having to lift a finger. The precedent: Proton. To understand the magnitude of the movement, we must look back. A decade ago, playing on Linux was almost utopian. Few developers ported their titles to the Penguin OS, Microsoft has been cornering the PC gaming market for a long time. However, Valve changed this forever from the software side. It was thanks to Proton, a compatibility layer derived from the old Wine that translates Windows instructions so that Linux understands them. This was the cornerstone of the success of the Steam Deck– Proved that you don’t need Windows to run titles of all types, including many AAA. Now, Valve wants to repeat the move, but changing the objective: from desktop PCs to mobile chips. The architect in the shadows. It was Pierre-Loup Griffais, leader of SteamOS, who confirmed to The Verge in an interview that Valve has been “secretly” financing several projects since 2016. The most important currently is «FEX-Emu». What is it? FEX is an emulator which translates the instructions of the x86 processor (the language of traditional Intel and AMD chips for PCs) to ARM64 (that of current mobile phones). The combination: Valve is integrating it into a specific version of Proton for ARM. The goal, according to Steam’s Linux OS boss, is to “remove barriers so users don’t have to worry about which games work.” Obsession with efficiency. Obviously, these investments are not philanthropy, but pure industrial necessity. The company prepares hardware that needs this technology to exist, such as the future Steam Frame viewer. But there’s more: Griffais explains that ARM chips are superior in efficiency for low-power devices, something that has opened the door to speculations of all kinds. An ultraportable with Steam smaller than the Deck? Who knows. Without the compatibility layer of FEX and Proton, these devices would be born without a catalog. With it, they could run thousands of PC games from day one, also adding Android games through another protagonist of recent days: “Lepton”. Yes, multiplayer titles with anti-cheats deep, like ‘Fortnite’. The democratization of gaming. The revolutionary thing about these emulators is that, as they are open source tools, the benefit is universal. It already allows run recent games like ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ on an Android mobile without an official version existing. Even manufacturers like Xiaomi have gone ahead with initiatives like “WinPlay” that allows Play Steam titles on your HyperOS devices. Valve is paving the way so that any powerful device, whether tablet, mobile phone or ARM laptop, can be a potential Steam Machine. This contrasts with the efforts of companies like Microsoft, whose emulation layer, Prism on Windowscontinues fighting with the game compatibility. The master plan. It is none other than running SteamOS everywhere. Valve wants SteamOS to be the default operating system for gaming, regardless of the silicon underneath. We have already seen the first steps with the arrival of SteamOS to third-party consoles and the announcement of the Steam Machine desktop By eliminating the barrier of chip architecture (x86 vs ARM) and operating system (Windows vs Linux/Android), the firm ensures that its store is the only constant in a fragmented hardware future. And that only implies one thing: that users spend money on it. A win-win in every rule. Cover image | Valve In Xataka | The video game industry seems to be clear about where its next boom is: in games “for couples”

Russia has found an old ally from other wars to bring down Ukraine’s most impenetrable defense: snowfall

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Winter has once again established itself as a decisive actor in the Ukrainian war. To the mud and fog A new enemy has been added to the Ukrainian defenses. Heavy snowfall and freezing rain are degrading the tool that has allowed kyiv to make up for its numerical inferiority for two years: the swarms of light, agile and deadly FPV drones that form the backbone of their “death zones” defensive. Winter as a weapon. The meteorology, which in other winters had shaped the strategy, this year is dismantling a defensive system which Ukraine had perfected into a nearly impenetrable barrier. Russia understood this before anyone else and launched large scale assaults taking advantage of the climate vulnerability of drones, opening gaps around Kharkiv, Huliaipole and especially Pokrovsk. For the first time in months, Moscow is advancing not because it has decisively improved its military, but because nature has given it a window that it is exploiting. with brutal determination. The unexpected weakness. It turns out that FPV drones, so effective in summer, are extremely fragile in winter. Their lack of inertia makes them victims of the wind, which pushes them and makes their trajectory falter with each gust, humidity and ice fog the cameras, snow reduces contrasts, fog blurs the depth of the visual field and the lenses become covered with drops that distort the image at the most critical moment. The pilot, who needs perfect vision to hit with surgical precision, encounters a blurry screenwithout references, unable to distinguish trenches, obstacles or even the final objective. The slightest loss of clarity turns an attack in a crash against the terrain or in an erratic missile. The result is devastating for the Ukrainian defensive strategy: when the drones do not fly, the death zones they cease to existRussian columns can advance under dark clouds and motorcycles and pickup trucks carrying troops take advantage of the fog to infiltrate towns like Pokrovsk, where urban fighting is already fierce. A dangerous opportunity. The adverse weather has created for Russia an opportunity that it has not enjoyed since the beginning of the war. With Ukrainian drones forced to remain on the ground, Russian forces have managed to maneuver with greater freedom of movement, something that drone warfare had made nearly impossible for months. They have crossed rivers in fog, entered towns with light vehicles without being detected and pushed through Ukrainian lines while the defense was reorganized while waiting for the weather to improve. Moscow’s advance, although limited in territorial terms, is having an impact psychological and tactical significant: it exposes the fragility of the Ukrainian defensive model when it is left without its star tool and shows that Moscow has learned to detect weather patterns to time attacks precisely. The November Fog already allowed its troops to deepen positions in Pokrovsk, a critical point whose control has become a symbol both for the Kremlin (which seeks to show progress to Washington) and for Kyiv, which is struggling to resist on a front where pressure is constant. Innovation against the clock. But the climate does not act in a unidirectional way. Just as quickly as drones became inoperable, atmospheric improvements allowed Ukraine to recover part of their kill zones and launch counterattacks with your FPV. The brigades, such as the 28th Mechanized, have taken advantage of the clear weather to hit Russian units newly deployed in Kostiantynivka, trapping them in exposed positions. This dynamic confirms that Ukraine is not defeated: is forced to adapt faster. Its industry, extremely flexible since 2022, is already developing a new generation of drones with more wind-resistant fuselages, low-light cameras, simplified thermal systems and control algorithms capable of stabilizing flight in adverse conditions. The arrival of these drones, scheduled for the coming months, will be key to reverse the advantage temporary that Russia has obtained. If Ukraine manages to deploy a winter-hardy FPV force, the balance on the front could tip again. The other winter war. While the drones fight in the white sky ahead, winter hits the cities otherwise: with blackouts of up to 16 hours, failed heating, stopped elevators and parents who go to the shelter with their children in their arms between explosions. The BBC told cases like that of Oksana, in her apartment in kyiv, who lives with a 2,000 euro battery that only extends normality by a few hours. Her daughter plays by candlelight and her husband works in the dark when bombing cuts off supplies. Millions of Ukrainians are preparing for what the authorities describe how “the worst winter in our history.” Moscow has intensified its attacks against transmission networks, not only to leave the population without electricity and heat, but to close bakeries, paralyze factories, stop transportation and suffocate the economy until causing social discouragement. According to the Ukrainian government itself, the Russian objective is not only to defeat the country militarily, but to destroy its internal cohesion. human wear and tear. After almost four years of war, fatigue has become widespread. He insomnia affects three times as many Ukrainians as people in countries at peace, and the nights are marked by sirens, Shahed drones and waves of missiles that have reached record numbers. Moral fatigue is mixed with the physical: the front is far away, but the war is in every hallway, in every staircase, in every unlit light bulb. And yet, surprisingly, the surveys show a rebound in optimism: more than half of Ukrainians believe in a better future, even if it is a fragile, oscillating one that depends on the evolution of blocked negotiations, the arrival of foreign aid or the result of a Russian offensive that is still far from a decisive victory. Frozen diplomacy. Plus: international negotiations are going through their most uncertain moment. A possible Trump-Putin summit is on pause. The EU is still discussing how to use 180,000 million on frozen Russian assets, and kyiv sees with concern how Washington sends mixed signals and how some European governments could change with elections less … Read more

This year the Three Wise Men bring something very special to children: children’s cosmetics

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There’s barely a month left until Christmas and the first catalogs are already in hands of thousands of families. But this year, among dolls, constructions and car tracks, something unexpected has appeared: construction kits. skin care aimed at girls. unicorn masks, jade rollers “to play spa” and even “children’s” serums. On TikTok, creators like Mommy of three and Alottameg They accumulate thousands of views criticizing the fact that these products are promoted as toys. The alarm has gone off: what is facial care being part of the letter to the Three Wise Men? A global phenomenon that reaches children’s catalogs. What the Christmas brochures show is not an anecdote: it is part of an international trend. According to The New York Timesactress Shay Mitchell launched Rini, a brand of masks aimed at girls as young as 4 years old, whose promotional images caused massive rejection on networks and among dermatologists. And the data increases the tension. A Nielsen IQ study has pointed out that American households are spending more than $2.5 billion annually on beauty products for girls between 7 and 12 years old. In Spain, in addition to the boom on TikTok, stores already include children’s spa kits in their toy sections. More and more girls are asking for jade rollers, creams and creams on their Christmas lists. glowmasks peel off or antioxidant serums. dand the Sephora kids to the toy aisle. According to Yale Medicinemany children and preteens are “obsessed” with creating skin routines copied from TikTok and Instagram: scrubs, serums, masks, night creams… Even without having acne or any dermatological problem. Dermatologist Kathleen Suozzi explains that: “Our study shows that 20% of tweens and teens spend more than $50 a month on products they don’t need, sometimes layering five or more products.” The phenomenon has a name in digital culture: Sephora kids. The academic study of Rachel Wetstone and Jane Grant-Kels details that Girls between 8 and 12 years old show routines of between 6 and 12 products on social networks, many of them designed for adult skin. In these videos, exfoliating acids, retinoids, concentrated vitamin C and steps that imitate a 10-step adult routine are repeated. Beyond the skin risks, the authors warn of the ethical effects: premature aesthetic pressure, misinformation and economic exploitation of an extremely impressionable public. When skin care becomes a feminine role. In parallel, children’s advertising has been pushing girls towards the field of aesthetics for years. The Women’s Institute analyzed toy advertising in the Christmas campaign and found that: In 38.5% of advertisements aimed at girls, archetypes linked to beauty or the role of caregiver/mother/wife appear. The color pink dominates in almost a quarter of toys for girls, while boys appear linked to vehicles, action, professions such as pilot, police or military. 11% of advertisements sexualize girls, while no examples of sexualization of boys were detected. In that context, that sets of skin care As a toy “for girls” it is not an anomaly, but one more piece of a puzzle: that of a female childhood associated with aesthetics, beauty and body care from a very young age. As we already explained in Xatakathe Alpha generation (born after 2010) is growing up under an “early ritual” of aesthetic care, driven by algorithms that serve them videos of perfect skin, filters and routines, often before they have reached puberty. Dermatological risks. There is broad medical consensus here. According to KidsHealthmost children and teens only need three things: a mild soap, a fragrance-free moisturizer, and sunscreen. For their part, acne-prone adolescents can use versions oil-free of moisturizer and photoprotector, but always with medical advice. In addition, they emphasize that anti-aging products (anti-wrinkle, blemishes, firmness…) are not necessary and can cause just the opposite: acne, irritation, burns or eczema. However, between different sources The ingredients that most worry about trends in preteens are: Retinoids and retinol, which can cause severe irritation, peeling, and photosensitivity. AHA/BHA acids such as glycolic or salicylic acids, associated with redness and chemical burns in children’s skin. Fragrances, one of the main triggers of allergic dermatitis in children Drying alcohols, which damage the skin barrier Chemical sunscreens, more irritating than mineral ones Comedogenic oils such as coconut, cocoa or lanolin, which clog pores and can aggravate cosmetic acne. There is a psychological impact. From Yale Medicine describe how some children They begin to feel a real compulsion to maintain long routines, to the point of affecting sleep, social time, or even school performance. The Wetstone and Grant-Kels clinical study points to growing anxietyconstant comparisons, and teenagers who feel “insufficient” if they don’t replicate the routines they see on TikTok. For their part, the case of girls between 10 and 12 years old who speak openly of fear to “get old”, a meaningless concept at his age. And some come to think that “without products they are not worth enough”, a symptom of what several experts They are already beginning to identify it as infantile cosmeticorexia. It is not the first controversial toy. But the first with real assets. For example, children’s makeup cases have existed for decades: barely pigmented shadows, almost transparent lipsticks, peelable nail polishes. They were toys. However, the current difference is twofold: on the one hand, the products imitate real cosmetics, with active ingredients (although in low concentration) and claims typical for adults: illuminates, blurs pores, anti-aging, repairs barrier. On the other hand, they are not sold only as a game, but as a routine, as a habit of care and self-care. That is, as something that is not used from time to time, but every day. As The Guardian detailsdermatologists already treat 10-year-old girls who use vitamin C, retinol and exfoliants “because they saw it on TikTok.” This is not a mask with friends: it is the idea that they should “take care of themselves” to avoid non-existent wrinkles. Is this really a toy? Christmas catalogs raise an uncomfortable question: at what point did a face mask become a normalized children’s gift? It is not … Read more

The three -day work week will bring us

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Artificial intelligence advances so fast that its arrival at the labor market has caught many with changed foot And he is already assuming The basic tasks that before carrying out fellows and recent graduates that began Your professional career. Far from seeing it as a negative factor for the labor market, some executive directors such as Jensen Huang de Nvidia, Eric Yuan de Zoom, Jamie Dimon de Jpmorgan or Bill Gates, see the arrival of AI as a complement that It will trigger productivity of employees. According to them, the work week It will not cut four days: It will be enough with a three -day work week. Bill Gates and the three -day week. Bill Gates was one of the first important names in technology to be convinced that The productivity would improve and would make the weekly days of five days unnecessary, being able to reduce them three days of work. He did it in an interview in the podcast “What now?” of Trevor Noahwhere he said “If we finally reach a society where we only have to work three days a week or something, there will probably be no problem if the machines can produce all the food and the other products and we do not have to work so much”, and add Bill Gates, “in the short term, the increase in productivity that the AI ​​provides is very interesting. Eliminating part of the heaviest work.” AI is already a reality. For his part, Jensen Huang, at the head of Nvidia, held in a Interview with Fox Business that we are “at the beginning of the AI ​​revolution” and pointed out that a broad adoption of artificial intelligence would make the passage to four days. Huang gave as an example the transition of the seven -day work week of the Industrial Revolution to the current one, and pointed out as an evolution the passage to a reduction from working hours to less than five days. Even so, he warns that we could be “more busy in the future than now“ Jamie Dimon, executive director of JPMorgan Chase, Provides a similar vision For the financial sector, one of the most demanding As for your workday. As Dimon acknowledged in An interview for Bloomberg TV“Literally they will probably work 3 and a half days per week” in the next generation, thanks to technology. Zoom CEO also aspires to work less. The last senior executive in positioning the side of the weekly day reduction to three days has been Eric Yuan, the general director of Zoom, who in An interview for The New York Times He assured that “I feel that, if AI can make our lives better, why do we need to work five days a week?”, Adventoring that this trend will free time by unnecessary endless working days. The impact of AI and the displacement of employment. The data on the impact of AI on the workplace does not paint a near future as optimistic as technological and CEOS millionaires predicted. The report ‘The Future of Jobs 2025’ The World Economic Forum indicates that about 92 million jobs will be destroyed by trends such as automation and the use of AI. However, at the same timethe study estimates the creation of 170 million New jobs Related to the technological development of that automation and AI, which would leave a positive net balance of 78 million jobs. In that same plot line, some of the main gurus of the current AI moves, such as Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, that I assured that many entry posts – especially in office work – are among the most vulnerable to total automation in the next five years. For his part, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, warns that half of the jobs They will suffer deep changes “In less than one generation” and that reconfiguration will be so fast that many of the current works will be deeply transformed or substitutable In a few years. Less days or more productivity. That the labor market will suffer A deep transformation It seems clear. What does not seem to be so much is whether that Improvement in productivity which supposedly contributes AI will be used to improve living conditions of workers as was done in previous industrial revolutions. For example, software engineers, one of the sectors most affected by AI automation, the evolution has been towards the Depreciation of the value of your workdemanding more intense days and worse remuneratedinstead of getting a shorter work week. In Xataka | Microsoft gets serious with the use of github co -ilot: its employees used it little, but that is about to change Image | Nvidia, Flickr (World Bank Photo Collection), Zoom

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