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“I don’t understand Stallone, I have the impression that he only does it for money”

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That phrase from Clint Eastwood is not current, but belongs to 2003, to a profile that Lillian Ross wrote about Eastwood for ‘The New Yorker’. Curiously, after that Stallone returned to Rocky, but he did so with a film that was a huge critical and public success. And Eastwood did not return to any of his previous films. That is, a quarter of a century later, the quote is nuanced but it essentially means the same thing. What is it coming for? That “I don’t understand Sylvester Stallone. I have the impression that he only does it for money” was said within Eastwood’s broader reflection on his own career: he was talking about Harry Callahan, about the risk of stagnating artistically, about the need to grow instead of going backwards. At that time, it was not known whether ‘Rocky Balboa’ would end up being a worthy film or a nostalgic wreck. In 2003, filming hadn’t even started. It was cool. Three years later, Stallone wrote, directed and starred in that sixth installment. The critical reaction far exceeded that of its two predecessors: Rotten Tomatoes Today it scores 78% out of 180 reviews, well above the reception that ‘Rocky V’ had in 1990. In commercial terms, ‘Rocky Balboa’ grossed 155.9 million dollars with a budget of 24 million. The installment that recovered Rocky was a very worthy tribute to a classic character. Everyone sins. Eastwood was also not free from the impulse to resurrect characters. He played Harry Callahan five times between 1971 and 1988, until ‘The Blacklist’, the last installment of the saga. When a sixth Callahan was finally ruled out, Warner Bros. did not close the door: in 2004 it considered relaunching the franchise with Dwayne Johnson as a thirty-something detective. The plan died due to Johnson’s own box office failures. Without consequences (relatively). However, Eastwood has remained true to his words: in 2003 he had already abandoned Callahan’s films many years ago and was fully immersed in a career as a complete auteur accepted by Hollywood. Words are always relative, yes, because at the end of the day… what are films like ‘Unforgiven’ if not late sequels to his successes as a protagonist for directors like Leone, where the director wonders what happens when the icons reach an advanced age and all the treasures obtained by clean shooting have come to nothing? What remains The really valuable thing about this statement, which we must remember that the current nonagenarian Eastwood has not uttered, is that it is infinitely nuanced: Rocky returned to one of his classic franchises (and would do so again with ‘John Rambo’, another critical – to a lesser extent, yes – and public success), but it was a more than worthy return. And Eastwood would stay true to his words, but four Dirty Harry sequels are there to remind him that there is no one with a completely irreproachable career. In Xataka | “They were not used to silence”: when Clint Eastwood set foot in Spain for the first time in 1964, he was marked forever

A study reveals that we no longer know how to say “I don’t know”

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I notice that it is increasingly difficult for us to say “I don’t know.” Maybe it is one of the most honest acts that a person can do and, on the other hand, with the arrival of AI and with all the information at our disposal, it seems that we are losing that habit in conversations. a study He wanted to put some data on the table regarding the subject. And the conclusion reached by a group of researchers from different universities in Paris, Rome and Milan, by bringing together 3,100 participants, has been that having access to an AI, even if it gives wrong answers, pushes people to stop recognizing the limits of their own knowledge. I know everything. Recognizing that we don’t know something is more useful than we think, since it is a mental skill that prevents us from acting guided by false beliefs. The authors of the study they call her “suspension of judgment”, that is, the ability to stop before responding when there is uncertainty. As AI assistants sneak into more and more aspects of our lives, the research, signed by Chiara Marcoccia (École Normale Supérieure of Paris), Walter Quattrociocchi (Sapienza University of Rome) and Valerio Capraro (University of Milan-Bicocca), wanted to verify if the simple presence of these chatbots it alters the moment when we decide that we already know enough to answer. The experiment. To isolate the effect, the team purposely designed questions that were almost impossible for an AI to get right, with very specific visual details from movies, such as the color of the kit in ‘I Want to Be Like Beckham’ or the vehicle a character drives in ‘Like Cat and Mouse’. This is data so specific that it barely appears on the internet, so the model used in the experiment (Step 3.5 Flash) almost always failed. Participants could ask the AI ​​if they wanted, but they also always had the option of leaving the question blank or admitting they didn’t know the answer. Figures. In the group that did not have access to any assistant, 44% of the participants admitted not knowing the answer when appropriate. Among those who could ask AI for help, that percentage plummeted to 3%, according to collect the study. Furthermore, the proportion of correct answers also fell, from 27% to 9%. That is, people answered more questions, but they got much less right. The most striking thing is that, despite making more mistakes, the participants felt more confident, since according to the study, their confidence in the answers went from 30% to 76%, almost double. What if there is money at stake?. The researchers suspected that paying for getting it right (and penalizing for getting it wrong) might correct the problem. It did indeed help, but very little, because with financial incentives, the willingness to admit that they did not know the answer rose from 3% to 8%, and the correct answers went from 9% to 16%. Interestingly, the authors themselves expected the effect of AI to be weakened by money, but their data did not confirm this. And the pull towards trusting the machine turned out to be practically independent of the economic incentive. Boundaries. Capraro, co-author of the study, explained told The Register that people “became much worse” at their performance, being only one-third accurate than the non-AI group, but ended up “twice as confident” in their own answers. For the researcher, this ability to say “I don’t know” represents neither more nor less than “the recognition of the limits of our own knowledge.” On the other hand, Capraro was especially concerned about the effect that this phenomenon can have on children. According to declared In the middle, adults “already have formed critical thinking” before the massive arrival of these tools, but children who grow up using AI from the beginning “run the risk of never developing that basic ability to question an answer.” Cover image | Solen Feyissa and Dylan Gillis In Xataka | Meta warns: “We have been building infrastructure for humans for 20 years, we may have 20 months to rebuild it for agents”

“children don’t play anymore”

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Before Amazon carts and unboxing videos existed, many childhoods were built glued to glass. On any given Saturday, the children would gather in front of the window of the toy store, with their noses leaving mist on the moon, absorbed in that Scalextric track, the Nancy with a new dress or the plastic castle that might arrive in Epiphany. Light bulb lights, catalog folded in the pocket and the look of trying to memorize details that will later have to be explained to the parents. Or write it in the letter. For decades, the Malaga dream board (not the tablao) had its own name: entering Juguetes Carrión was almost a rite of passage for many families. Mid-April 2026 They lowered the blinds of their last store. “Children no longer play, the sector is no longer profitable,” the manager of the firm wieldsArturo García Carrión. As you can see from your websitethere is no longer sale to the public. From olives to toys. The most amazing thing about this story begins at the beginning: The story is not born as a toy store. In 1953, Francisco Carrión Ruiz, creator of Aceitunas Carrión, bought a store on Compañía Street. He calls it Almacenes Carrión. Sells clothing, perfumery, haberdashery. And also toys. I know it well because in my town, Quintanar de la Orden, there was an enclave of Aceites Carrión that fed several families for a lifetime. Because wow, they did well. Toys became the nerve center of the business. During the 80s they opened stores in Mártires, Alarcón Luján, Santa Lucía and Mármoles. The main warehouse was established on Bodegueros Street, parallel to the El Gallo artery, in the Ronda Exterior industrial estate. Many Malaga residents remember this warehouse full of boxes. The second generation, with María Dolores Carrión Martín, turned the company into a chain. In the 90s it had almost 30 stores spread throughout Andalusia, including in shopping centers, where every December they dressed up with their Christmas trees. 25 stores and a legendary brand. Don Dino, the brand that brings together other independent associates, was added to the parent toy brand and ended up spreading throughout Spain. A decade ago, the family business had 25 of its own stores and up to 45 franchises under the Don Dino banner. In practice, the network covered a good part of eastern Andalusia, with its own premises in Malaga, Granada and Jaén. A little over two months ago, the map was already much smaller: only the three stores on Nueva, Juan Sebastián Elcano and Motril streets remained. Also the Bodegueros warehouse, which was already focused on digital conversion, serving web orders and functioning as an outlet. The requiem began with the store on Velázquez Avenue, then followed by the Teatinos store, and so on until the third generation decided that there was no way to balance the numbers. “We have tried every way possible,” they said. “Children don’t play anymore”. “We cannot continue losing money, it is not profitable,” García Carrión said a few months ago. Consumption habits have changed: more time with screens, less time with physical toys—inheritance and direct influence from those themselves. parental consumption habits—. And fierce competition comes from everywhere. From hypermarkets, which sell toys on a large scale to platforms like Temu and AliExpress that will even continue to make noise despite the new tariffs, that “Shein rate” of 3 euros plus VAT for each B2C distance sale sent outside the EU, which already applies to all imports of purchases less than or equal to 150 euros. High street stores are suffering the perfect storm because, with minimal margins, increasing rents and fixed costs that cannot be cut without emptying the store, there is no choice but to go elsewhere, how it happened to Tobarix. And those of us who compare prices with our mobile phone also have no arguments to go downtown. Except when we remember that humane treatment and professional selection and recommendation will always be worth more than the price of the product we want to give as a gift. The map that shrinks non-stop. The closure of Carrión is just another example of the death of an entire sector. Or in retreat, at least: between 2019 and 2023, Spain went from 1,340 specialist stores to 1,160. There are 180 fewer toy stores in four years. The figure has continued to declinelike the country’s birth rates. Iconic chains like Imaginarium, the brand that served as a gateway for my children, have fallen. It closed after 32 years in operation. Poly Toys also disappeared. Juguettos was the one who bought its brands and nine of its stores, and is already working on a restructuring to close the year with about 200 operational stores. At the end of 2025 there was talk of 44 associates, 700 people on staff and the objective of reaching 100 million in 2026after its alliance with Eurekakids. Of course, although toys continue to be the heart of the business, they are by no means exclusive. Which ones remain? Juguettos and Toy Planet concentrate half of the specialized toy stores left in Spain. Behind them are networks such as Don Dino – with its headquarters in Carballo (A Coruña) and link in Aldaya (Valencia) -, Drim or Juguetilandia. They all fight in a market that is weakening little by little. The death of the sale of video games in physical box It will also hit the ankles of this chair that is the showcase shops. Lego summarizes it with a fact as simple as that, in Spain, its “number one retail partner” is Amazon, which grows 25% annually. The global online channel grew by 30% and the store channel decreased by an equivalent figure. Given this lack of options, not only a few meters of shelves disappear, those spaces where creatures touch, try and order without going through an app are also lost. In weeks Málaga has been left without two mythical ones such as Carrión and Confitería Aparicio de … Read more

We’ve been hearing for years that adults don’t have to drink milk. The latest studies say the opposite.

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For decades, milk was the undisputed pillar of any healthy breakfast. However, in recent years we have witnessed a real demonization of dairy products and we have heard practically everything, from being “unnatural” for adults, to being the culprit of increased cholesterol or even the risk of cancer. But we are faced with several myths that are important to deny. We are designed for it. One of the most repeated arguments is that we are the only mammal that consumes milk in its adult stage. The experts they explain that, although a part of the world’s population loses the ability to digest lactose after childhood, many others maintain this enzyme active throughout life thanks to a genetic adaptation. Therefore, there is no basis to recommend that all adults stop drinking milk because of this enzyme. Here science is quite clear, since a population study made in Galicia with 850 people showed that, although the alteration of lactose metabolism affects 38% of individuals, when normal physiological quantities are consumed such as a simple glass of milk or yogurt, symptomatic intolerance plummets to 2% for milk and 8% for yogurt. Mortality. Another of the most widespread myths is precisely that dairy consumption in adults increases the risk of mortality and cardiovascular diseases, but science says the opposite. Here, one monumental umbrella review of 2021 pointed out that the evidence does not support that milk is harmful and in fact, in most scenarios its impact is neutral, and in several it is clearly favorable. But if we want to sharpen our aim, a 2026 dose-response meta-analysis, based on 29 cohorts and more than 1.6 million participants, has drawn the exact curve of how dairy interacts with our life expectancy. The researchers found a “U”-shaped association, seeing that the optimal point of consumption is located between 250 and 300 grams a day. Cancer. The alleged relationship between dairy products and cancer is another of the great battlehorses on the internet. However, the most recent reviews they point in another direction, since it has been seen that dairy consumption reduces the risk of suffering from colorectal, bladder, liver, oral cavity and even ovarian and breast cancer. The calcium dilemma. With the rise of plant-based diets, it is common to hear that “spinach or oat drinks have as much or more calcium than milk.” This is where a crucial scientific concept that the nutrition label doesn’t cover comes in, which is bioavailability and the food matrix. We see this in a study published in 2024 that measured exactly how much calcium our body actually assimilates, and was seen that with the consumption of dairy products there was a bioaccessibility of between 19 and 34%, while the vegetable alternatives were 5 and 20%. And this is explained because the joint presence of lactose and casein peptides in milk acts as a “vehicle” that favors the absorption of calcium in our intestine. But in addition, many vegetables rich in calcium are loaded with phytates and oxalates, compounds that “sequester” calcium and prevent us from absorbing it. Your proteins. From a protein point of view, dairy products play in a higher league. If we use the DIAAS index, dairy proteins get scores higher than 1and this means that they provide an excellent amount of highly digestible essential amino acids, far surpassing most plant proteins. Images | Pixabay In Xataka | One in every ten liters of “milk” sold in Spain does not come from any animal: the unstoppable (and silent) growth of vegetable drinks

Generation Z is breaking a rule Baby Boomers have always followed: don’t talk about money

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Nightly, in The Revoltdozens of guests face two of the most uncomfortable questions that can be asked of a person: about your sex life and about money. With the arrival of sex education to the classrooms, the taboo of talk about sex has been reduced, but when it comes to talking about salary, almost everyone hesitates. They change the subject, let out a nervous laugh, or dodge the answer as best they can. Money is still the true taboo of spanish after-dinner. Outside of Spain, something similar had been happening for decades. There was no talk about salary, neither with friends nor family. That unwritten rule, which boomers and generation X strictly followed, generation Z is definitively breaking. We don’t talk about money. The silence about money did not come out of nowhere. It has roots in social comparison: talking about what you earn puts you in a success or failure scaleand that is uncomfortable. The ethics of effort also weigh, the idea that having little money is synonymous with little ambition, something that in Spain is also mixed with a religious component that associates wealth with greed, as the economist Joan Tubau said. in an interview for The World. The sociologist Iván Parro matches in which money stopped being just a means of exchange and began to become a means of identifying social status. Having or not having money defines, in part, your place in the group. That’s why building a wall on your salary also protects your ego. Nobody wants to expose their position on that scale in front of others. Generation Z does not shut up. Mary Julia Koch, editor of the Wall Street Journal, explained it in one of his interventions in Fox Business. His generation has grown up publishing his entire life on social networks: romantic relationships, friendshipsuniversity life and work. Talking about salary was, according to her, the next logical step. And that step is already being taken on a massive scale. According to a Stepstone study74% of those under 30 years old already talk openly about their salary, compared to less than half of those over that age. Economic pressure helps to understand this opening: high rents, precarious jobs and a generation that needs to compare figures to know if they are being paid well. “Generation Z and Millennials are increasingly better informed about the salary they can expect, as they discuss it more openly than older generations,” the report notes. In Spain it is still difficult to talk about money. Here the change goes more slowly. According to data from a Younited analysis collected by The Newspaper51% of Spaniards prefer not to talk about money openly, and up to 60% of those under 40 believe that it should not be done in public. Culture is important, but so is the lack of training. The Bank of Spain itself makes it clear in its latest Financial Competencies Survey: almost half of the population considers that their knowledge is low or very low. When you don’t know how something works, it’s easier to avoid talking about it than to risk appearing ignorant. A new language to talk about money. This change in tone also has its own face in Spain. Streamers like Ibai Llanos have managed to talk about salariesrents or mortgages sound like a normal conversation and not a meeting with the bank, something that has helped the creators become the gateway to financial education for many young people. The secrecy of a lifetime is being dismantled little by little, between reels posted on social networks and a generation that already sees silence about money as more of a disadvantage than a taboo. In Xataka | If the question is how much money does it take to be happy in Spain, a study has the answer: double what you earn Image | Unsplash (Marionel Luciano, Emil Kalibradov)

China’s longest underwater tunnel has 600,000 LED points calculated so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel

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A few months ago we unraveled everything about the Taihu tunnel in China and its LED ceiling that has turned the infrastructure into a tourist attraction. However, in addition to the very curious aesthetics offered by this illuminated ceiling, there is another reason why this infinite screen runs through the tunnel, and that is so you don’t fall asleep at the wheel. It is normal, since we are talking about the longest underwater tunnel in the country. Eyestrain. Traveling the 10.79 kilometers of the Taihu tunnel at the maximum permitted speed takes almost ten minutes under the lake, enclosed between concrete walls, without windows or external references. And it is precisely this scenario that is most conducive to the appearance of visual fatigue, a danger especially if we are behind the wheel. For this reason, when the tunnel was designed, lighting was no longer considered only a matter of visibility and aesthetics and also began to become a safety tool. Tthree “heavens” distributed along the route. The engineers divided the tunnel into three sections and placed, at the junction points between them, what the technical documentation calls a “visual wake-up system against fatigue.” There are three ceilings made up of LED dot screens, very common in tourist locations in China. Each of these roofs is made up of about 200,000 LED light pointsand the system can show different scenes, from a blue sky with clouds, a night sky full of stars or, on specific dates, the five-star flag of China. The control system can automatically switch between these scenes by time slots and sections. According to Baidu Baikethis “visual awakening” system seeks to relieve the tension and feeling of overwhelm caused by driving for a long time in a closed space. Why those colors? Those responsible for the project chose blue, yellow and cyan as the main colors of their activation zones, combined with warm tones to generate dynamic changes. There is scientific support behind this decision, since light with cold tones and short wavelengths, such as blue, has non-visual effects on the brain that go beyond allowing us to see better. Different studies have verified that the color temperature of the light influences the mood, alertness level and reaction time of drivers, something related to how this type of light stimulates the brain mechanisms that regulate wakefulness. Just like share From Motorpasión, simulator tests showed that blue-toned lights were the ones that increased drivers’ attention the most, followed by red-toned ones, precisely the colors that are repeated the most in the images showing the tunnel ceiling. On the other hand, researchers presented their results at an IEEE conference in 2024, having conducted field tests in the Taihu tunnel itself to see how different LED configurations modified the eye movements and physiological responses of drivers in real conditions. lThe walls also “speak”. Throughout the entire route, the side walls of the tunnel are decorated with stripes of blue, yellow and green that intertwine in geometric gradients, as if they were ribbons. According to they count From the local media Sohu, all this display of lights is managed by an intelligent lighting system that not only decides which scene to show and when, but also monitors its own operation. The system incorporates real-time monitoring of breakdowns, with automatic alerts that inform the exact point where a failure occurs, which facilitates the maintenance of an installation that, after all, has to operate uninterruptedly under a lake. Cover image | FeatureChina/AP (cnn) In Xataka | Chile wants a tunnel under the Strait of Magellan to link Tierra del Fuego with the continent. The project exists, the agreement with Argentina does not

Spain is full of cables that “don’t belong to anyone”

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The Los Gallardos fire, in Almería, is already the deadliest of the century in Spain: a dozen dead, some 6,600 hectares and 1,405 evicted. Many of the victims They appeared inside their carstrapped on a dead end road. And while the Civil Guard works to identify everyone and the INFOCA teams work to completely put out the fire, the public debate becomes increasingly intense. There will be many topics to analyze, but there is one in particular whose importance will be capital: the one that started it all, the cable that could have turned it all on. The cable theory. Almost from the first moment, the theory that a broken electricity cable could be the cause of the tragedy spread like wildfire. At dawn on Friday, Endesa sent a technical team and concluded that the cable was not its own. RedEléctrica was quick to add that it was not part of its transportation network either. As they explained, it would be a private low voltage connection which served an abandoned restaurant (bar Anita) decommissioned since 2009. According to the technicians, in fact, the cable should not have tension. And, of course, without tension there are no sparks. That The judicial experts have already made it clear: If there is no electrical charge circulating through the copper, it is physically impossible for the fires to originate there as described. This has opened the debate: was it really “without tension” as it appears in Endesa’s files or was it being used (“underhand”) to supply scattered farmhouses? We still don’t know, but (beyond the specific case of Los Gallardos) the interesting thing is the question it raises: how many cables like these are loose in Spain? What exactly happens with the cables? The first thing is to realize that we are facing a serious problem. And not exactly because the fraction of fires caused by cables are many, but because they tend to be very destructive. In California, for example, the cables are behind approximately half of the most destructive fires in its history despite causing less than 10% of ignitions. In Spain we do not have clear statistics, but some studies say that the figures are around the same percentages: in Aragon the power lines caused this year around 10% of accidental firesand WWF reports already place them among the causes of large fires. And no one does anything? Well, after the Guadalajara fires of 2005, the State forced the network owners to keep the margins of your lines clear and review them from time to time. However, the case of Los Gallardos highlights something about which we have reflected little: there are many lines that, on a practical level, belong to no one. That is the big problem: An old connection to a ruin, without maintenance and perhaps with informal current, can be a huge source of problems. And now what? Once responsibilities are resolved, there will be more pressure to monitor private power lines in forest areas (something that is frequently debated in California). But the solutions are always the same: finance prevention It is boring and, for this reason, we are spending 400 million a year in Spain when it would take ten or fifteen times more. Image | Dina Lydia In Xataka | The fire in Los Gallardos (Almería) reminds us of the car trap: it is not a shelter, it is a lethal oven

don’t make important decisions in a heat wave

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Ted Mosby from ‘How I Met Your Mother’ said that nothing good happens after 2 in the morning and it makes sense because tiredness and sleep are not good advisors. And if you are out and have had a drink, even more so: it is better not to send messages that you will later regret. Well, there is another time when it is better not to make important decisions: when it is very hot. I’m not saying it, science says it. Given how hot it is being this summer that has just begun, it is better to take it easy. Take it easy. In a study carried out by a research team from Monash Business School, they analyzed how temperature affects the ability to make rational decisions. The most striking fact is that it is not the hot days that affect the most, but the nights. More specifically, those with temperatures above 25°C. As we are suffering in our flesh these days, those torrid nights worsen the quality of sleep and the deprivation of rest takes its toll on cognitive performance the next day, especially affecting mathematical tasks necessary to evaluate economic risks. This relationship between sleep and cognition is not new: sleep deprivation impairs executive function, working memory, and impulse control. Why it is important. First, because throughout the day we make many decisions (most of them small) that, accumulated over time, can generate lasting consequences over time. An example: a compulsive purchase instead of saving it. Furthermore, the study shows that this effect distinguishes between social classes: it hits households with lower incomes hardest, where air conditioning (having it or turning it on) is a luxury. Thermal discomfort is not something specific: it is a reality that summers are getting hotter and the heat waves follow one another with greater intensity and they arrive more frequently. Context. For the study they used the Indonesian Family Life Survey, which uses data from thousands of families in the Asian country over years, along with temperature data from NASA satellites. This way they were able to discern daytime temperatures from nighttime temperatures. The work is part of research on climate and economic behavior: there is already evidence that heat lowers our productivity, but aggressiveness and risk behavior also increase. In detail. The mechanism that explains these bad decisions is lack of sleep and/or low-quality sleep. That deprivation It disproportionately affects numerical and calculation skills, more than other cognitive abilities. These mathematical skills are precisely those that support decisions about risk or that have their consequences in different time frames. Yes, but. The study focuses on a single country, with a particular climate and socioeconomic conditions, so extrapolation to other places requires some caution. In addition, there are other factors like pollution, the right hand of heatwhich also affect cognitive performance In Xataka | Your body suppresses your hunger at more than 40 degrees for a reason of pure survival: to prevent you from being “cooked” inside. In Xataka | The silent effect of the extreme heat wave: your usual drugs turn against you Cover | Vladislav Babienko and Immo Wegmann

“Check the insurance coverage carefully. You don’t always need the most expensive one”

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Summer is coming, the heat, trips to the beach and doubts in front of the rental car counter. Restrictions, company policies that you had not considered and insurance clauses that you did not imagine and that, of course, you can fix with a few more euros. But the latter is not always the best option. At least, that is what experts consider who are clear about what you should do: read the fine print and sign only if you are convinced. Rastreator, OCU and AXA agree on the latter. The first thing. “The first thing is to check what coverage the insurance offered by the rental company really includes, since, although all cars have mandatory insurance, it does not always protect against all unforeseen events,” he points out. Patricia Carrilspecialist Tracker. The insurance and rental car comparison company is clear that “it is not always necessary to hire the most expensive option to travel with peace of mind. A balanced insurance should cover damage to the vehicle, theft and civil liability, in addition to having an acceptable deductible. The franchise. The excess is the money that we will have to put out of our pocket if the car suffers an unforeseen event. Imagine that you rent a car and that the insurance has a deductible of 150 euros. This means that if the repair costs 80 euros, we will pay the 80 euros. But if the fix costs 1,000 euros, we will only have to face 150 euros. According to the OCU“companies offer Premium insurance by default, making it difficult for customers to find cheaper options” but, even so, there are many occasions in which they “require users to disproportionate bail (and they do not inform about the deadlines and conditions for returning that money)”. The restrictions. Another thing that is solved by reading carefully what we are hiring is being aware of the restrictions to which we submit as drivers. Francisco Olmedodirector of P&C Private Offering AXA Spain is clear that the most frequent are: The age and years of service of the driver: we must know if there are restrictions based on age or years of driving license since we run the risk that the insurance will not cover the damages. Road coverage: it is important to know well what the insurance covers if we have a problem on the road and if there is any type of mileage limitation. Know the criteria for the deductibles: Olmedo assures that “in the event of a blow to the front and another graze on the side, two accidents with two deductibles can be considered” so the driver would have to pay twice Do I add anything? For Rastreator, the most interesting thing is to add window and tire coverage because they are the most common, especially if you are going to drive for a long time, park on the street or travel on secondary roads. “The objective is to find the balance between protection and price; a policy that is too basic can be expensive if an unforeseen event arises,” they explain. In addition, we must be very clear about all the details that may affect our trip. If we are going to cross the border we must point it out because in some contracts you have to pay extra money. We can also add accessories such as children’s seats. An essential. What they are clear about at Rastreator is that theft coverage cannot be missing. “If the car disappears during the rental, the driver may have to bear a very high cost,” they explain. From OCU they point to another essential: knowing what we sign. They remember that in no case should a contract be signed without being clear about what is being signed and that the documents must be clear about details such as when a deposit is returned, how long the money can be withheld and in what amount to pay a deposit or the mandatory requirements to be met when returning the car such as maximum mileage or the level of the gasoline tank. Photo | Sixt In Xataka | $500 for a barely visible mark when handing over a rental car: companies are making a killing with AI scanners

Alibaba’s Qwen AI model is the new crown jewel. The only problem is that they don’t make money from it.

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Jack Ma he returned like a prodigal son to the international scene in February of last year. He did so at an event with the president of China, Xi Jinping, and that represented an important support for the technological leader. Since then his company, Alibaba, has not stopped flooding us with its open AI models, Qwen, but that strategy is having the same lights and shadows as its competitors. Devastates downloads. Alibaba launched its Qwen family of models in 2023 and released them with open weights almost immediately. That made them a perfect alternative to be able to use them locally and to also be able to tune them in all types of scenarios. In January 2026, Qwen was already the open AI model most downloaded in the world with close to a million daily downloads according to data from Hugging Face. By the end of 2025, Qwen was already the most downloaded open weight model in the world by far. Source: AI Base. But popularity does not equal income. In the first quarter of 2026, Alibaba indicated that it had obtained revenue of $1.3 billion related to AI, just 4% of its total revenue. The figure is very short, especially if we take into account that Alibaba plan to invest $55 billion in AI infrastructure by the end of 2027. Investors want profits now. Company shares have fallen 37% on the Hong Kong stock market this year: investors are clearly concerned about the lack of return on this bet on AI, something that we have also been seeing for some time in the US market. Internal divisions. The pressure to turn these open models into a business seems to be dividing Qwen’s own team. In March its chief engineer, Lin Junyang, announced his departure from the companyand he was followed by several key engineers amidst internal disagreements on how to monetize the model. The company has already started move token in the field of proprietary models: in April already released three of them in a few days. War with the US and Anthropic. Meanwhile, the company also faces external pressures. The Pentagon has included it on a blacklist of companies that Washington says support the Chinese military, something Alibaba denies. Additionally, Anthropic recently sent a letter to US senators accusing Alibaba of try to copy their technology using 24,000 fraudulent accounts. Alibaba has declined to comment on the matter. Alibaba has the same problem as OpenAI. Richard Lin, vice president of the company Datastrato, has been involved in the panorama of open AI models in China for some time, and his message reminds us of a palpable reality not only for that market, but for all startups and AI companies: “At the moment there are no AI companies with a sustainable business model. It is not a healthy industry.” The message is as true as it is forceful, but all AI companies would surely respond with what Zuckerberg said: “Losing a couple hundred billion dollars would be a bummer, but that’s better than being left behind in the race for superintelligence.” The funny thing is that they are both (probably) right. Image | qwen In Xataka | China’s open AIs aren’t “beating” ChatGPT, they’re doing something more important: catapulting their industry

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