deceived Archives - usatoday24

As children we were taught that Jupiter revolved around the Sun. Technically we were deceived

May 1, 2026 by usatoday24

If you are over 30 years old, you probably learned in school that there are nine planets that revolve around the Sun. Then you found out that there were eight, because suddenly Pluto lost its planet category and became a dwarf planet. As if all that were not enough, now I am here to tell you that Jupiter does not revolve around the Sun. Sometimes not even the Earth does. We have been deceived or, rather, we have been told everything quite simplified. It is not the center, but the barycenter. There is a lot of talk about the gravitational attraction that large objects exert on smaller ones. The Sun on the Earth, the Earth on the Moon, the Earth on the people who walk on it… However, smaller objects also exert a certain gravitational pull on larger ones. It is tiny, sometimes imperceptible, but it is there. Therefore, although it is the Sun that dominates the planets of the Solar Systemeach one of them also pulls a little bit of it. This means that the center around which they all rotate is not in the center of the Sun, but at a point slightly separated from it, known as the barycenter. To understand it better. All objects have a center of mass. Broadly speaking, it is the point where we assume that all its mass is concentrated. It does not mean that all the mass is there, but for practical purposes, when doing calculations, it is considered that that is where it is concentrated. Because of how external forces interact with the object, it is right at the center of mass where it is best kept in balance. For example, with an elongated object of homogeneous mass, such as a ruler, the center of mass will be its actual center. If we try to hold the ruler on a finger, the easiest thing to do is to place the finger right under its center. There it stays better in balance. On the other hand, in a hammer, where the heaviest thing is its end, its center of mass is there. In the case of the Solar System, the barycenter is the point where the mass of the system is concentrated. Logically, it is very close to the Sun, since 99.86% of the mass of the system corresponds only to the king star. However, there is influence from other masses, so it is a little far from the solar center. The case of Jupiter. If the Sun is 99.86% of the masses of the Solar System, Jupiter accounts for 70% of the remaining mass. Therefore, individually it is the one that deviates the center of gravity the most. This means that the barycenter around which both Jupiter and the Sun itself move is outside the solar surface. Jupiter does not revolve around the Sun, but around a point that does not even cross the sun. The case of the Earth and the Moon. In the case of the Earth and the Moon there is also a barycenter. The Earth is much larger than the Moon, but the Moon also has mass and exerts some power over it. For this reason, the barycenter is not right at the center of the Earth, but 5,000 kilometers from it. It is still within our planet, but not as centered as we usually think. Jupiter and the Sun are a more extreme case, which is why the center of gravity is completely outside the Sun. The Earth does revolve around the Sun…sometimes. The Earth is much smaller than the Sun. If they were alone in the Solar System, the center of gravity would be practically in the center of the Sun. But of course, they are not alone. All planets act on the point where that center of mass is located. And the thing is, it’s a center of mass that moves as these planets move. Something similar happens to what happens when all the sailors on a ship move around the deck. The ship’s center of mass can change. In the case of the Solar Systemthe most influential sailors are the gas giants. That is, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. When these align, they pull the center of gravity outward and the Earth does not rotate around the Sun. In short, no, the planets do not rotate exactly around the Sun. But we are not going to get fancy explaining it at school either. Don’t feel like you’ve been fooled, they’ve just simplified it for you. Image | NASA | Martin Jediny (Wikimedia Commons) In Xataka | A planet has just disappeared: NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a violent cosmic event that changes everything

They believed they had found jobs in large companies. In reality they were being deceived: this is how the trap works

April 23, 2026 by usatoday24

Looking for a job is already hard enough without having to be suspicious of every message that arrives in your inbox. And yet, that is exactly what the campaign that has warned about proposes. NordVPN: a trap set up to look like a real opportunity. We are not talking about a clumsy email or a sloppy website, but rather something much more refined, with names like Meta, Disney, Coca-Cola or Spotify as a claim. That’s the key to everything: they play with the illusion of those who believe they may be on the verge of an interview or a new job, when in reality they are entering into a fraud. The investigation alerts of a campaign of phishing specifically aimed at job seekers. The attackers have set up an attack chain in several phases that impersonates large brands and seeks to take the victim to a very specific point: a false login screen with which they intend to keep their Facebook credentials. Let’s see in detail the strategy of these cybercriminals. The mechanics behind fraud that imitates real selection processes It all starts with cold recruitment emails, carefully written and with a professional tone that seeks to resemble real human resources communications. It is not a minor detail that some of these shipments are made through legitimate services such as Google AppSheetbecause not only can that help you avoid spam filters, it also helps make the scene more believable to the person on the other end. The trap, at least at the beginning, is not presented in a crude way, but with a very careful appearance. From there, one of the most peculiar pieces of the entire chain appears: the so-called “HUB” domains. According to the investigation, these are pages that do not show their most sensitive content to anyone who enters directly. If a security analyst or an automated system visits that domain without coming from the specific link included in the email, what they find is a generic website, with hardly any visible activity. The truly important part is only activated when the visit arrives from that specific reference, which acts as a key and reveals the next step of the deception. The next move of the campaign is to give the victim exactly what they expect to see after a convincing recruitment email: a website that looks like a job portal. The research explains that, after that first access, the user lands on a intermediate domain which simulates a legitimate job offer portal and where you can consult positions that seem real and associated with the company whose identity they are impersonating. The more the scene resembles a normal job search, the easier it is for the person to interpret everything that comes after as a logical part of the same process. Campaign replicates legitimate job pages and uses Facebook login as hook The decisive moment comes when the victim clicks on “Request” or “Send request”. That click does not open a job form or a next phase of the supposed selection process, but rather a phishing page that asks you to log in with Facebook to continue. That’s where the trap stops insinuating itself and begins to execute its true purpose. All of the above was designed to lead to that exact point, one in which the request may seem like another simple verification within the application, when in reality what is being delivered are the account credentials. The supposed job opportunity was nothing more than the decoration of an operation with a much more specific purpose. According to the research, the final objective is steal Facebook credentials and thus obtain access to the victim’s account, with the possibility of also compromising other services connected to it. That’s why it’s a good idea to stick with a practical idea: before entering any credential, you should check the URL carefully, check that you are on the official domain, and be wary of any strange login. Images | Xataka with Grok | NordVPN In Xataka | AI is crucial for the US military. So he’s naming OpenAI and Palantir leaders as lieutenant generals

We have spent our entire lives blaming spring for our tiredness. Science has just shown that we have lived deceived

March 25, 2026 by usatoday24

March is coming, the days are getting longer, temperatures rise and suddenly our body begins to fill with a feeling tiredapathy and drowsiness that takes over us. Traditionally, this is considered ‘spring astheniaand people, logically, do not stop searching for their symptoms on the Internet and buying expensive vitamin complexes to compensate for the bad feeling that the change of season leaves. But… What is true in all this? A paradigm shift. Until recently, evidence on this phenomenon was scarce and contradictory; however, a key investigation published in the Journal of Sleep Research has recently come to shed light on the matter. The research, led by Dr. Christine Blume from the Center for Chronobiology at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Basel, followed 418 adults from Germany, Switzerland and Austria for more than a year, from April 2024 to September 2025. Every six weeks, participants answered questionnaires about fatigue, drowsiness, insomnia and sleep quality, and at the end of the research they only had to cross-check information to determine if there really was any interfering pattern. with our health. The results. Here what was seen is that a resounding 47% of the participants claimed to suffer from “spring asthenia”, but the reality is that when the information was cross-checked there was absolutely no seasonal or monthly variation in the levels of fatigue, daytime sleepiness or quality of sleep. And statistically the tiredness that people feel in spring is statistically identical to what they feel in autumn or winter. In fact, fatigue in daily activities tended to decrease slightly as the days had more daylight hours, without any specific “peak” of fatigue being recorded during the spring. In this way, the conclusion drawn is that the discrepancy between what people think they feel and what objective data shows suggests that we are dealing with a cultural phenomenon and not a genuine seasonal syndrome. Why do we believe it? This is where the study gets genuinely interesting, since the authors do not simply deny the phenomenon, but rather propose a psychological explanation for why we experience it so convincingly. Nocebo effect: if we expect to be tired in spring, we interpret any sign of fatigue as confirmation of what we thought was going to happen. Cognitive dissonance: good weather generates high social pressure to enjoy it with outdoor activities. The problem is that when the energy does not appear, saying that you have ‘spring asthenia’ is a good excuse to not feel guilty for not following the group. Labeling effect: Like wine tasting better when we’re told it’s expensive, knowing that “you get tired in spring” actively changes how we interpret our own physical sensations. What chronobiology says. It is a reality that we are not robots and that our body reacts to the environment, and this is where chronobiology confirms that there are seasonal variations in sleep linked to the number of hours of daylight we enjoy. Studies in pre-industrial populations in Tanzania, Namibia or Bolivia show that in winter they sleep approximately one hour more than in summer. Likewise, recent research on university students in Seattle confirms that exposure to daylight is vital for our circadian rhythm, however, none of these physiological changes translate into a “clinical picture” or a peak in fatigue in spring. In medicine. Nowadays, when you go to your primary care doctor, it is impossible to receive treatment for ‘spring asthenia’ because it is not included in any official classification. However, doctors warn that a patient who arrives with great fatigue for consultation should not be sent away, even though he relates it to the arrival of spring. It must be remembered that there are many diseases that can cause this condition, such as anemia, a severe allergy, an infection or even thyroid disorders, among others. A lucrative business. While science dismisses the existence of ‘spring asthenia’, the reality is that people’s sensation is the perfect breeding ground for private clinics and dietary supplement brands. When we feel bad, we want a quick solution with a pill, and this makes the sale of multivitamin complexes, caffeine pills and a host of products related to reducing fatigue increase their sales. Images | Vitaly Gariev Arno Smit In Xataka | Only one in four Spaniards has rested on vacation. The culprits: work anxiety and the inability to disconnect

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