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In the 70s Álava left an entire town under its airport. What I didn’t know was that it was hiding a treasure of 5,000 medieval coins.

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He Vitoria airport It may not be the largest, the best connected or the busiest in the country, but it stands out for the volume of merchandise it moves. Last month it exceeded 5,400 tonswhich consolidates it as Aena’s fourth busiest aerodrome, only behind Barajas, El Prat and Zaragoza. If the Alava terminal works, moving cargo, planes and hundreds of thousands of passengers, it is thanks to an old village that ended up buried in the 70s: Otaza. The most curious thing is that he did it with a hidden medieval treasure. The price of growing. In the 1970s, Álava businessmen found themselves with a dilemma. If they wanted to continue growing, they needed better connections, regular flights that would allow them to reach the rest of the metropolises in Spain and Europe. They had the Salburua airfieldinaugurated in 1935, but it did not seem like the best solution, so the technicians had to look for alternatives. And they found her. After evaluating several locations in the region, such as Ullibarri Arrazua. Salvatierra or Zurbano concluded that the best solution was to set up a new aircraft facility on the land of the town of Foronda. A work in record time. The project had the support of the Provincial Council and moved forward with astonishing speed. At least for the deadlines that infrastructures the size of an airport usually handle today. The construction of the aerodrome was approved in 1972 and in 1976 Civil Aviation gave its OK to the first phase. The works, remember The Mailinvolved the construction of a 2,200 x 45 m flight runway, in addition to the operating systems. The work (and procedures) continued to advance at a good pace during the following years. In 1978, the institutional machinery was launched to contract the control tower, accesses and urbanization and just two years later (the January 30, 1980) the ministry officially opened Vitoria Airport to national and international passenger traffic. In April of that same year Iberia inaugurated one of its most important lines, the one that exalts it with Madrid. Sew and sing, right? Not at all. The construction of the terminal encountered a problem: the proximity of a small village that ended up being located 370 meters from the runway. His name: Otaza. The population had a long history and it even had its own church, but it was not what is said to be very populous. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 19th century it hosted only about thirty of people, more or less what there were in 1974, when according to The Mail 26 neighbors lived there. The Álava authorities were therefore faced with a dilemma: What should take priority, the new airfield or a village with a handful of families? And the pickaxe arrived. The expropriation was not what is called simple. Not all the neighbors willingly agreed to leave their homes and in fact there were a few ‘numantinos’ (not many, it is true) who did not leave until the end. Their efforts did not prevent the bulldozers from taking Otaza away. In October 1979, the regional press reported how, after a break and despite not yet having reached a total agreement with the neighbors, the authorities had resumed the demolition work. The Bishopric had fewer objections, which reached an agreement that allowed the village temple to be demolished. The pickaxe had to work little. A few days later, on November 2, the demolition was completed. A town to remember. That was the end of Otaza. Although in its day the town had welcomed dozens of people, had a church and services, the expropriation of the land and the demolition works sealed its fate. Shortly after completing the works, the authorities agreed the disappearance of the council, which is now part of Astegieta. However, as EITB recalls, it was not the only town affected by the works on the new terminal. Antezana of Foronda He also paid a ‘toll’ for Álava to have its own flights. One last surprise. Otaza’s story could have ended there if it weren’t for the fact that shortly after his ‘death’, in April 1980, a family decided to take a walk through the grounds. During the walk, as they passed near the church of San Emeterio and San Celedonio, they found a jar with coins. The piece caught their attention enough to report it to the authorities, who confirmed that it was a curious treasure: more than 5,000 coins of copper and silver minted during the reigns of Alfonso I of Aragon and Alfonso VIIIbetween the 12th and 13th centuries. Today it is known as “the treasure of Otaza”. Images | WikipediaGoogle Earth and Mikelo (Flickr) In Xataka | Barajas needed to improve its roads but a baroque hermitage made it complicated. Solution: put it in a roundabout

“We didn’t expect this.” A Ukrainian drone has revealed a Russian arsenal in a warehouse, and the surprise has been huge: the missiles are animals

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From the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when tanks were advancing while logistics columns were bogged down and fuel was scarce, the war began to reveal an uncomfortable paradox: the more modern it became in the skies, more “medieval” It was done on the ground. In fact, in that space where drones, satellites and trenches coexist, the return of solutions from the past apparently overcome was an early sign that the conflict was going to be, above all, a test of resistance. The latest Ukrainian discovery has confirmed that the wear and tear is tremendous. The return of the war of attrition. The irony is that the war in Ukraine has been shedding any illusion of modernity to return, as the days go by, to brutal logic of wear, one in which the quantity and capacity to take losses They weigh more than any technological “game changer”, and where the Russian army, pressured by the massive consumption of material and men, is beginning to show obvious signs of logistical exhaustion. On the southern and eastern front, the shortage of armored vehicles and modern systems is no longer hidden with silence, but is manifest in improvised solutions reminiscent of conflicts from another era and centuries, while Moscow insists on maintaining constant pressure on Ukrainian defenses at any cost. Cavalry in the 21st century. This wear and tear became visible at the beginning of 2026 when Ukrainian units detected and neutralized Russian assaults carried out on horseback, a tactic that seemed banished from modern warfare but that reappeared in sectors such as Oleskiivka in response to lack of means conventional. We are talking about small assault groups that advanced mounted, supported by prior reconnaissance, in infiltration attempts that ended up being aborted by drones and fire defensive, leaving such an absurd image (and repeated) as revealing: many horses survived, but the soldiers did not, and the Russian army confirmed that it was willing to resort to any available resources to sustain its offensive. The drone and the impossible arsenal. Now, the scene What finally condensed this drift came several weeks later, when a Ukrainian drone sneaked through the destroyed roof of a hidden warehouse, several kilometers from the line of contact, with the usual expectation of finding ammunition, fuel or military vehicles. What happened gives an idea of ​​these four years of slow war that has worn down both sides. Instead of artillery and technology to advance, the camera showed something that looked like something out of a rural garage: aging civilian cars, motorcycles from another era, and saddled horses, an “arsenal” as unexpected as it is eloquent of the state of the war in many areas. The message. “We didn’t expect to see this. It was really unusual,” said the drone pilot. to the Insider mediumspeaking on condition that he only be identified by his callsign “Cosmos.” “We were hoping to find some armored vehicles,” he added. He video It went viral because it summarized in seconds the real state of Russian logistics, but also because it demonstrated that those animals were not an isolated anecdote, but part of a system that already uses cheap and expendable media to move and attack under the constant threat of drones. Russia and the logic of sacrifice. For the Ukrainian commanders, this discovery is neither trivial nor a simple curiosity, but rather proof of a way of waging war based on accepting massive losses of material and personnel, replacing armored by civilian cars and horses because they are easier to replace. This logic, which prioritizes the attrition of the enemy, even if the cost is enormous, explains why Moscow continues to advance slowly, launching assaults with many times obsolete or improvised in regions such as Donbas, even when the monthly casualty figures, according to NATOreach levels that are difficult to sustain. If you will, the drone that expected to find missiles and found animals ended up portraying, better than any report, a war that moves backwards while consuming everything at hand. Image | 82nd Air Assault Brigade, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine In Xataka | It is evident that Russia can absorb thousands and thousands of casualties. So Ukraine is already designing a much riskier plan In Xataka | An unprecedented experiment is happening in Ukraine: bombs have turned dogs into other animals

The US recorded something strange underground and didn’t know what it was. Now he has just accused China of pressing the nuclear button

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During the Cold War, even at times of greatest nuclear tension, Washington and Moscow maintained an unwritten rule: If a test was done, the world had to find out. The explosions were political signals as much as military experiments, designed to be seen, measured and, of course, feared. Therefore, talking about detonations so small that they barely leave a seismic trace and about tests designed not to be detected, generates great concern. The United States just accused China exactly that. An unprecedented accusation. It happened last Friday, when the United States denounced China for having carried out at least a nuclear test with explosive performance in 2020 and to prepare for other low-power ones, a complaint made in Geneva through by Undersecretary Thomas DiNanno just as the classical arms control framework is collapsing after the New START expiration. According to Washington, Beijing would have resorted to decoupling techniques to dampen seismic signals and hide underground detonations, an accusation of enormous political significance because it breaks the previous ambiguity and indicates for the first time a specific date, the June 22, 2020in the midst of debate over whether the United States should recover the option of testing nuclear weapons again. The diffuse limit. The technical and legal background is key to understanding the controversy, since both China and the United States have signed, but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treatyallowing subcritical testing no self-sustaining nuclear reaction but prohibits any explosion with measurable output. Washington maintains that Beijing would have crossed that line with evidence very low powerdifficult to detect, while the body in charge of verification, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, ensures that its network did not detect no event compatible with a nuclear explosion that day, thus underlining the fragility of a control system that never came into full force. Lop Nur, satellites and silent expansion. It we have counted other times. American suspicions are also supported by satellite images and intelligence analysis that point to intense activity in the historic Lop Nur polygonwith new excavations, tunnels and drilling that could be used for both subcritical tests and higher performance detonations. This movement fits with the rapid expansion of the Chinese arsenal, which would already exceed the 600 nuclear warheads and could reach a thousand before 2030reinforcing the perception in Washington that the real strategic challenge is no longer Moscow but a Beijing with the capacity and will to challenge US military primacy. A new nuclear race scenario. The Washington complaint comes accompanied by a clear political message: without binding limits, transparency or verification mechanisms that include China, the system inherited from the Cold War ceases to serve, and the United States reserves the right to adopt “parallel steps”including the resumption of testing, if it considers that other actors are breaking the rules. Beijing strongly rejects accusations, claims its moratorium and its doctrine of no first use, but the simple verbal clash shows a change of phase, one with the risk that the end of New START and mutual distrust open the door to a new nuclear race in which small, almost invisible explosions can have enormous strategic consequences. Image | CCTV In Xataka | Nuclear fusion is humanity’s great utopia in the short term: China has already set a date for it In Xataka | China is building something that looks like an oil well. It is actually a nuclear bunker with a command center

Researchers extracted photos and statuses from 3.5 billion WhatsApp users. Meta didn’t react until they told him.

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Between December 2024 and April 2025, a team from the University of Vienna identified 3.5 billion active phone numbers on WhatsApp (practically its entire user base) from a single server and without encountering too much technical resistance. They processed more than a hundred million numbers per hour and extracted not only the existence of accounts, but also public keys, profile photos, status texts, and device metadata. They did it without having to hide, from the same university IP, same server, five accounts. For four months, no one in Meta noticed. Why is it important. This is not the first time that this vulnerability has been demonstrated, as it has already occurred in 2012 and 2021but the first at this scale and speed. The finding exposes a structural contradiction in WhatsApp: Your architecture should show whether a number is registered to enable contact discovery… …but that functional need collides with the privacy of its users. Knowing who uses WhatsApp in countries where it is prohibited, such as China, Burma or North Korea, can have serious consequences. There they detected 2.3 million, 1.6 million and five accounts respectively (not five million, just five). The investigation, published a few weeks ago in NDSS 2026shows that this crack not only persists, but has widened. The context. The researchers developed ‘libphonegen’, a tool that reduces the search space from billions of theoretical combinations of possible mobile phone numbers to “just” 63 billion real candidates for 245 countries. Using unofficial WhatsApp clients that directly access the XMPP API, they queried these numbers at a rate of 7,000 per second. Neither his IP was blocked nor his accounts sanctioned. Meta did not respond until researchers explicitly reported the finding in March of this year, and countermeasures did not arrive until October, just a couple of months ago. The figures. He dataset resulting five times higher the scandal of scraping from Facebook 2021: India leads the document with 749 million users (21% of the total), followed by Indonesia and Brazil. In Spain, 46.5 million accounts. 81% use Android. More than half have a public profile photo. 29% have the status text visible. Between the lines. The researchers were able to infer the operating system by analyzing initialization patterns of the cryptographic keys. Android starts certain identifiers at zero. iOS does this in random values. This detail matters because iPhone users are higher-value targets for attackers. They also detected that public keys are reused. They found 2.3 million different keys used on 2.9 million different devices. In Burma and Nigeria, tens of thousands of numbers shared the same key, pointing either to faulty implementation or outright fraud. They even found twenty American numbers that use a private key composed only of zeros. In detail. The method is not limited to confirming the existence of the accounts. For each one they extracted public keys, timestamps and the list of linked devices. This allows you to build detailed profiles without accessing the content of the messages. The age of the device can be estimated by counting key rotations. The “popularity” of a user is inferred by the frequency of depletion of their prekeys single usewhich are consumed every time you start a new conversation. Researchers downloaded 77 million profile photos of the +1 rank (prefix for the United States and Canada) in a matter of hours. 66% of them contained recognizable faces. They also found disturbing status texts, such as those from traffickers listing prices, accounts business advertising drugs or publicly visible corporate emails from governments and armies. And now what. Meta has deployed probabilistic cardinality counters to limit how many unique accounts a user can query without blocking legitimate contact discovery. It has also restricted bulk access to status photos and texts. The researchers confirmed that the measures work in subsequent tests. But no countermeasures protect those who were already listed during the months in which the system has been wide open. The big question. For four months, from a university server without even hiding their identity, they looted practically the entire user base of the most used application on the planet without anyone at Meta realizing until they were explicitly told. If these researchers were able to do it under these conditions, who else did it before without telling anyone? In Xataka | WhatsApp brings the big update of the season: the most important change is not on the mobile, but on the computer Featured image | Dimitri Karastelev

A Russian family lived isolated in Siberia for more than 40 years. He didn’t know about World War II or the space race.

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In the cold, vast and desolate siberian taiga one would expect to find spruce trees, maples, streams and acres covered in frozen silt. Maybe (hopefully) some lone pso or wolf. What no one would include on that list is what he discovered around mid 1978 an expedition that flew over a mountain located more than 240 km from any human trace. There, in the middle of the Abakan mountain rangea group of geologists came across a family that had been isolated for 42 years. Its story still fascinates today. And that cabin? Such a question must have been asked 47 years ago by a group of Soviet geologists flying over the Siberian taiga, an area rich in oil, gas and mineral reserves. He ran summer of 1978 and the team, led by Galina Pismenskaya, was traveling by helicopter in a region of Siberia located 160 km from the border with Mongolia when the pilot saw something between the trees. Something unexpected. A rudimentary cabin with a small garden. In most parts of the planet, such an image would be of little interest, but Pismenskaya’s team was supposedly in an unpopulated area. In fact, the Soviet authorities were not aware that anyone lived there. The nearest houses were supposed to be more than 200 kilometers away, so the question was obvious… What the hell was that shack doing there, built next to a stream, among trees? They were so intrigued that geologists decided to land. “We come to visit”. The impressions of Pismenskaya and her colleagues when approaching the hut we know them thanks to Vasily Peskova Russian journalist and traveler who would later interview the protagonists of that story to collect it in a book. Upon landing, the researchers found a hut made with the little that the taiga offered: bark, branches, trunks and pieces of wood blackened by humidity. On one side there was a tiny window. On the other side there was a door through which an old man appeared. “Like something out of a fairy tale”, would relate some time later Pismenskaya, who recalled that the man was barefoot, was wearing a patched shirt and pants and sported a scraggly beard. “He seemed scared. We had to say something, so I started: ‘Greetings, Grandpa! We’ve come to see you.’” The fact is that that old man was not alone. When they entered the hut with him, the geologists discovered that he lived with his four children. They all shared that wooden construction without rooms, blackened by smoke, cold and with the floor covered in shells. Upon seeing the new arrivals, one of the young women began to pray, scared. Another, hidden behind a post, ended up collapsing from suffocation. Logical. The family had not seen another human for four decades. Dating back to 1936. The old man in question was called Karp Osipovich Lykov and the fact that he lived there, in conditions almost medieval people, hundreds of kilometers from any hint of civilization and surrounded only by his children, is explained in light of what happened in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Just like his Karp family was an old believera member of a church split from Orthodox Christianity that embraced the ancient liturgy and ecclesiastical canons. The path of Karp’s coreligionists had diverged from the Russian Orthodox already in the 17th century, after Nikon’s reformwhich made them outcasts. This had happened in times of Peter I…and with the Bolsheviks. This harassment affected the Lykov family directly. Around 1936, a patrol shot his brother on the outskirts of the village where they lived, so Karp made a radical decision: he gathered his wife Akulina and the two children they had at the time (Savin, nine years old, and Natalia, two) and escaped into the forest. Literally. He walked away as far as he could. Without looking back and with light luggage that included just a handful of seeds, a rudimentary spinning wheel, a couple of jugs to boil water and the clothes they were wearing. Once in the taiga, the family built a cabin with what they had on hand, set up a garden and continued with a life marked by isolation, their beliefs and deprivation. In 1940 the couple had their third son, Dmitry; and four years later the fourth and last daughter, Agafia, was born. Back to history. The Lykovs continued with that life until Osipovich’s helicopter located them in the summer of 1978. It may sound strange, but the family had settled in a particularly inhospitable place. No one saw them before because no one looked there. The marriage moved as he encountered difficulties, moving further and further away from the villages and towns, until settling at a point located more than 240 km of the nearest settlement. Not even the Soviet authorities were aware of the existence of that family. The consequences of that isolation are obvious. For the Lykovs, time, politics, science… stopped dead in 1936. The family did not know that Europe had been shaken by World War II, nor that man had stepped on the Moon in 1969, nor was it aware of the space race, the name Kennedy or the Beatles did not ring a bell… Some family members marveled at seeing a television or items as seemingly simple as matches or a roll of transparent cellophane. Fascinating yes, bucolic no. The Lykovs’ 42 years of isolation were, however, hardly bucolic. Their cabin was built next to a stream and the forest offered them wood, fruit and even game, but the harsh conditions of the taiga subjected them to a constant test. Especially the first years. Agafia even told how towards the end of the 1950s the family faced their peculiar “years of hunger”, during which they had to decide whether to eat the little they harvested or save some of the seeds to grow them the following year. “We were hungry all the time,” he admits. Years later the family suffered a frost … Read more

Getting a manicure while she was on sick leave almost cost her her job. He was saved by a detective who didn’t know how to do his job.

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Companies increasingly make use of the services of private detectives to investigate whether their employees really They are on sick leave or they are faking itwhich would be reason enough to a disciplinary dismissal. According to the detectives themselves, the companies that use their services do so because they previously They already have signs that there is fraud, which is why the majority of cases that are investigated agree with the companies that hire them and end up in disciplinary dismissal. However, in some cases, the way that evidence is obtained is the key to the success of the case. This is what happened to the employee of a beauty center in Barcelona. Despite being able to prove that there had been fraud, a sentence The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia declared the dismissal null and void and forced the company to compensate its employee. Medical leave and dismissal. The employee at the beauty center went to the doctor because of pain in her left hand and back, and they gave her the temporary disability leavewith rest and rehabilitation to recover. While she was still on sick leave, the company began to suspect that perhaps she was not that sick and decided to hire a private detective to check what she was doing outside of work. The detective prepared a report in which he noted that the worker had performed a manicure service for which she had charged 35 euros in cash while she was still on sick leave. With that report as a key piece in its argument, the company fired her via disciplinary dismissal, alleging that she had broken trust and that she was taking advantage of her leave to work on her own. In your dismissal letter you could read: “(…) you summoned, and performed a manicure treatment on, a person who was accompanied by said company (of detectives), at the aforementioned address, and charged this person in cash 35 euros for the service performed. The company has sufficient evidence, images and videos that confirm the regularity of these events.” What the court decides. The worker appealed the dismissal because she understood that it was unfair and was based on evidence obtained illegally. In the first instance, the Social Court No. 1 of Barcelona agreed with the company and declared that the dismissal was appropriate, and assigned the employee to collect 771.15 euros for untaken vacations plus 10% late payment interest. But did not recognize compensation some. The story changed when the case reached the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJCAT), when the worker appealed that first sentence. The Social Court reviewed how the detective’s evidence had been obtained and concluded that it was invalid because it had been obtained by inducing the situation. That is to say, something that was already happening had not been observed, but rather the opportunity had been created for the employee to do that manicure. What Detectives Can and Can’t Do. The case puts on the table what private detectives can do when investigating a person on sick leave and what lines they cannot cross. From Sentinel Private Detectivesremember that the law “prohibits them from taking images or evidence of events that occur in the intimate part of people’s lives. The garden is also considered an extension of the home,” so they cannot record there if it is a closed space. The investigation agency points out that their work should focus on “following and observing, without forcing situations,” and that their role is that of “mere observers of facts and behaviors.” Jordi Briñoldirector of Brininvest Detectiveshighlights that its activity is regulated by the Private Security Law and for the Civil Procedure Law, and that in cases of sick leave they can only act in “open spaces.” According to his explanation, “anything that happens in intimate spaces or that has what is called an expectation of privacy, we cannot access there”, and any monitoring must comply with what he calls “the triple judgment of proportionality”, that is, that the evidence is adequate, necessary and that it does not take longer than reasonable. The researcher clarifies that they can carry out actions under pretext (for example, making an appointment in a publicly announced consultation), but “we cannot provoke an unnatural response”, which fits with the idea that the person under investigation cannot be induced to commit the infraction. Why the detective’s evidence is useless. In this case, the court considers that the detective did not limit himself to looking from the outside at what the convalescent employee was doing as his regulations dictate, but that he intervened to make the behavior happen for which she was later punished. Along these lines, the ruling links with the doctrine of the Supreme Court that rejects evidence based on provocation, and remembers that situations cannot be fabricated and then used as an excuse to fire. By removing the detective’s report from the case, the company’s entire argument collapsed, so the Court understands that the true reason for dismissal is that the worker I was on medical leavesomething that Law 15/2022 prohibits using illness as a reason to dismiss a person because it represents discrimination due to illness. For this reason, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia declares the dismissal void, orders that the company reinstate the employee, pay her all the salaries that she stopped receiving during the time that the judicial process lasted and pay her 7,501 euros for moral damages, in addition to 600 euros in defense fees. In Xataka | Social Security has published the data on sick leave in 2024 and we have bad news: we have broken a record Image | Unsplash (Behnaz Kh)

When Spotify launched its first Wrapped, it didn’t know what it was creating: a real monster

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If companies have learned anything since the Internet has evolved into this strange algorithmic mass that sometimes escapes our control, it is that, if something creates a trend, it must be there. For a few days we can enjoy the latest Spotify Wrappedthe now classic annual review where we find data playfully designed to share on networks such as which artists we listen to the most on the platform or which songs have defined our year. And as it could not be otherwise, the networks are flooded with captures. So far everything is correct. But as happens with any content that becomes popular and people like it, alternatives arise. And that’s not bad. In fact, Spotify didn’t invent personalized annual reviews, but when we already see a pseudo-wrapped on platforms like WeTransfer (hey, good for them), the alarm bells are already ringing that perhaps we are slipping a little. And throughout these days I have found examples that are each more absurd. Spotify. Wrapped has become one of those excellent viral marketing strategies. Since its launch in 2016, Spotify has gotten millions of users to voluntarily share their listening data every December. The flood of screenshots that each user shares on social networks becomes a tool for creating FOMO that encourages another potential user to use Spotify, or even gives them reasons to stay on this platform. It has become more or less a cultural phenomenon, a tradition like Christmas itself. And of course, this has attracted other companies enough to want to replicate this effect at all costs. YouTube Recap Irresistible. As I said before, Spotify was not the first to make annual summaries, but it was the first to turn them into irresistibly shareable content. The key is in its design: very striking graphics, personalized statistics and a perfect format to share on your Instagram story. The hashtag #SpotifyWrapped becomes a global trending topic every year, generating organic advertising comparable to very few advertising campaigns. And the formula is repeated every year without few changes beyond the visual: take the data you already have about your users, wrap it in an attractive way and return it to share with other potential clients. PlayStation Wrap-Up A Wrapped for everything. Having an annual review of your platform or service has become mandatory for many companies, extending to all types of industries. In the field of entertainment and gaming, platforms such as YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, PlayStation, Xbox, nintendo, Steam either Twitchamong many others, offer their own summaries. Curious not to see anything official that resembles it on Netflix and other streaming platforms, beyond some third-party tools, such as kapwingwhich allow you to import your own viewing data to see a similar overview. Twitch Recap cforced asses. Where the trend becomes truly interesting is in sectors where, a priori, an annual summary does not make much sense (or seen another way, cases ahead of their time). To Lidl (yes, the supermarket) has its annual review, where it tells you what you have bought the most through its app or how many times you have gone shopping. Lidl’s move is even nice, but there are cases that play a fine line. WeTransfer could perfectly fit in here. As a file transfer service I have no complaints (maybe one or two), but I would never have expected that a platform of this kind would also think of joining this type of marketing initiatives. And if we talk about forced cases, Securitas Direct. As is. The platform tells you through its My Verisure app data such as the number of times you have accessed and things like that. I can’t help but imagine someone anxiously awaiting their annual review of their alarm service to find out how many times they have been broken into this year. Jokes aside, here is already an area in which having a wrapped looks out of place. But if anyone finds these statistics useful, nothing to say about it. Courtesy of Jose Jacas More examples that embrace fashion. Duolingo even overtook Spotify this year by launching your Year in Reviewrevealing learning statistics, streaks and the dreaded error counter. Trakt, a website where users register series and movies what do you see, too has its own summaryalthough to see it you have to upgrade to their payment plan, so I’ve never seen it. WeTransfer Recap Platforms like Uber either LinkedIn They have also joined the bandwagon with their own versions. Even the New York Times has launched its “Year in Games” for Wordle, Connections and other games, showing statistics such as the average attempts in Wordle or the most correct categories in Connections. Viral logics. If something starts to gain traction on the internet, all brands want to be there, even if the connection with their business is forced. It is the fear of being left out of the conversation. The same FOMO effect that these tools achieve, in some way, also generates FOMO around companies that seek to enter this trend in any way. These annual reviews are no longer just a data analysis tool, but a format that brands try to appropriate to gain visibility and engagement. It works because we are very heavy on sharing content and we generate the occasional unpopular opinion in the process, even if it is your supermarket purchases. This is how we operate on the Internet. I can’t wait to see the Wrapped from my electric company to learn more about my consumption peaks or my bank account to see what nonsense I waste my money on. In Xataka | How to share Spotify Wrapped 2025 on Instagram, WhatsApp or other apps

We thought talking to ChatGPT and other AIs was private. We didn’t have these extensions stealing our conversations

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There are matters that we would not publish on social networks or comment out loud. However, there they go, flowing in a waterfall of messages towards an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, as if it were our best friend. There are no glances, no judgment, no awkward silences. There are answers that, many times, are limited to proving us right or convincing us. But beyond that, an uncomfortable question appears: what if everything we have told could end up in the hands of a third party? What if there is someone else reading those conversations? Opt out in training models or maximizing the security of our account may not be enough. There is another threat that is reaching millions of users these days, and they may not even be aware of it: browser extensions that spy on and steal what is said to chatbots. At the top of the list is Urban VPN Proxy. A Chrome extension with more than 6 million users, rated 4.7 stars and that, until the publication of the cybersecurity report that we will talk about today, showed a “Featured” badge on Google, something that we can still verify in a version archived at the Internet Archive. The discovery. What has set off the alarms is a report published by Koia company specialized in cybersecurity. It is not a generic warning or a hypothesis, but the result of analyzing what these tools do in the background while we browse. When looking at popular extensions, the kind that are installed to gain privacy or security, their researchers detected a worrying pattern: some were capable of reading and sending conversations held with artificial intelligence chatbots outside the browser. A much larger attack surface. The investigation indicates that Urban VPN Proxy did not target a single AI provider, but rather a broad set of popular platforms. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini either Microsoft Copilot appear among monitored services, greatly expanding the volume and diversity of data potentially captured. These conversations are not trivial: they often include intimate questions, financial information, or details of ongoing projects. Therefore, access to this type of exchange involves a very delicate level of exposure. How conversations are captured. According to the research firm, the mechanism does not depend on vulnerabilities in the chatbots themselves, but on the privileged place that the extensions occupy within the browser. Urban VPN Proxy monitors active tabs and, when the user accesses an AI platform, injects code directly into the page. This code intercepts the requests and responses exchanged with the server before the browser displays them on the screen, allowing access to the full content of the conversation in real time. What Urban VPN Proxy extracted were not jumbled fragments, but entire conversations with their associated context. Koi documents the systematic capture of user messages, AI responses, identifiers for each chat, and temporal data that allows them to be sorted and related to each other. This type of information, crossed over weeks or months, allows us to draw very precise usage patterns. From work habits to personal concerns, the value of the whole lies precisely in its continuity and not in a specific message. The content script that forwards the data It does not depend on activating the VPN. One of the most important nuances of the report is that conversation capture is not tied to the use of the VPN service itself. The mechanism, they explain, works independently, even when the VPN is disabled. It is enough to have the extension installed so that the code responsible for intercepting conversations continues operating in the background. There is no user-accessible switch that allows you to disable this collection without completely removing the browser extension. Conversation collection was not present from the beginning. According to the analysis, Urban VPN Proxy did not include this behavior in previous versions of the extension. The turning point comes on July 9, 2025, when an update is released that activates the capture of conversations with AI platforms by default. From there, any user with the extension installed and automatic updates activated began to execute that new code without an explicit notice comparable to the change in behavior or having to expressly accept that modification. What does “AI protection” promise? In the extension’s tab and in its messages to the user, Urban VPN Proxy presents this feature as an additional layer of security. According to its description, it serves to alert when personal data is entered into a chatbot or when a response includes potentially dangerous links. The problem is that this layer of notifications is not directly related to the collection of conversations. Activating or deactivating warnings does not prevent messages from continuing to be intercepted and sent to the company’s servers. The investigation did not stop at Urban VPN Proxy. By tracing the origin of the code and its behavior, Koi found that the same conversation capture logic appeared in other extensions published by the same publisher. Some present themselves as VPNs, others as ad blockers or browser security tools. Together, there are more than 8 million users between Chrome and Edge, which expands the scope of the problem and explains why researchers talk about an ecosystem and not a specific anomaly. Identified extensions for Chrome: Urban VPN Proxy 1ClickVPN Prox Urban Browser Guard Urban Ad Blocker Identified extensions for Microsoft Chrome: Urban VPN Proxy 1ClickVPN Proxy Urban Browser Guard Urban Ad Blocker Who is behind. Urban VPN Proxy is operated by Urban Cyber ​​Security Inc., a company linked to BiSciencea data intermediation firm, a data broker, as described by Koi. Koi recalls that BiScience had already been the subject of previous investigations by other cybersecurity experts for the collection and commercialization of browsing data. The report frames this case as an evolution of these practices, going from collecting browsing habits to capturing complete conversations held with artificial intelligence systems. The finding also puts the focus on how the user is informed. The extension generically mentions the processing of data related to AI services … Read more

We thought we “discovered” fire 50,000 years ago. We didn’t know how wrong we were.

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For decades paleontology has maintained a clear distinction in history: it is one thing to use fire and quite another to create it at will. Something that seems very silly, but is essential since until now the evidence we had on the table pointed to the ability to light a bonfire from scratch They dated back 50,000 years. But this has changed. A big change. A published study in Nature He told us that we were quite wrong about this. A team of researchers has pointed out that hominids already possessed technology to make fire voluntarily 415,000 years ago. That is, 375,000 years earlier than we thought. Although what is surprising is that it was not even our species, but the early Neanderthals. Something that has been known after studying a site found in Barnham in England that has given the necessary evidence to reach the end of the matter. How do we know? At the moment we do not have a time machine to travel to the past and see what happened in our history. That is why this discovery makes it surprising that they used reverse engineering to reach this conclusion. The elements that were available at the site were not just ashes, but the “ignition kit.” Researchers were able to identify fragments of pyrite and flint axes, which can be used to make fire. Although the key here is that the pyrite It is not native to that area, but hominids had to intentionally transport it to make fire voluntarily. The mechanism is, in essence, the prehistoric version of a modern lighter: striking the pyrite with the flint generates sparks capable of igniting dry tinder. Confirming it. With these indications, anyone could think that it could be a random fire, and that is why advanced techniques such as archeomagnetism, micromorphology and spectroscopy were used. In this case, the results indicated that the sediments had been heated to more than 700 ºC, which suggests that it was a concentrated and fed fire. This is also added to the fact that the flint axes presented specific cracks caused by cycles of heat and cooling, indicating that fires were made repeatedly. A big jump. The importance of this discovery is monumental since until now we assumed that complete control of fire was a late skill. This discovery sets the controlled ignition clock back by 375,000 years compared to previous evidence from French sites. This tells us that the minds of early Neanderthals, who were most likely found in that area, were more developed than thought. In this way, transporting pyrite implies long-term planning, which is not an instinctive reaction to the cold, evidencing a cognitive ability to think about the future. The domain of fire. Making fire at will is considered a great evolutionary advance since fire can lengthen the day for nighttime socialization or even cook food to obtain more energy with less digestive effort. This also represents a great geographical expansion for the species, since 400,000 years ago Europe was going through a very important glacial period, which made the heat of fire essential for the species to perpetuate itself. Images | Mladen Borisov In Xataka | Neither lions nor hyenas: at the top of the food chain 30 million years ago, there was a “pig” weighing more than a thousand kilos

If you didn’t make it to Black Friday or Cyber ​​Monday, you can still take advantage of all these deals

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Both Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday have ended, although we are still finding very good offers that have either continued from these days or have arrived now. In this article we are going to review the five best deals in technology and entertainment. Huawei Watch 5 by 359 eurosa very complete watch that has dropped in price from 649 euros. Google Pixel 9a by 379 eurosa good mobile for those who are interested in taking good photos without spending too much money. MacBook Air M4 by 849 euros Adding it to the cart, a laptop with a very good quality-price ratio. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra by 989 eurosone of the best phones of the year with a more reasonable price. PlayStation Portal by 194.90 eurosthe PlayStation 5 peripheral that already allows you to play in the cloud. Huawei Watch 5 One of the best discounts we can find at MediaMarkt has fallen on its Deals of the Day. Today only, the Huawei Watch 5 can be purchased for a price of 359 euros. It is a beautiful and elegant smartwatch with titanium construction that has eSIM connectivityits autonomy is up to 4.5 days in standard mode and it has a good assortment of sensors to monitor physical activity. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Pixel 9a One of the mobile phones that has maintained its price in recent days is the Google Pixel 9awhich can still be purchased for 379 euros. It is a pretty smartphone interesting for its photographic sectionbut also because of its compact size of 6.3 inches and its screen that offers good brightness to be able to view content outdoors. Plus, your operating system will be up to date for many years. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links MacBook Air M4 If what you are looking for is a good laptop to work or study, be careful with the MacBook Air M4 that, when you add it to the PcComponentes cart, it remains 849 eurosone of the best prices we have seen to date. Weighs only 1.24 kgits screen is 13.6 inches, it incorporates Apple’s M4 chip and its autonomy is up to 18 hours of video playback. MacBook Air M4 (16GB, 256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Another of the phones that has maintained the price of Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday is the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultrawhich can be purchased at MediaMarkt for 989 euros (256 GB) or by 1,099 euros (512GB). Samsung’s mobile phone is one of the best that has been launched this year and It stands out mainly for its battery lifefor its screen—especially its anti-reflective treatment—and for its artificial intelligence functions. If you prefer, Powerplanet has the same 256 GB mobile slightly cheaper, since it is on sale for 949 euros. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links PlayStation Portal The PlayStation Portal price drops on rare occasions, but after the end of Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday it can be purchased with a discount that leaves it 194.90 euros (standard version) and by 194.90 euros (Midnight Black). It is a good accessory for the PlayStation 5 that, after its last update, allows you to play video games in the cloud —even some of the ones we have purchased—as long as we have a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. 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 | Ricardo AguilarHuawei, Google, Apple, Samsung, PlayStation In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2025), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best laptops in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models

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