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Sydney Sweeney inaugurates the post-woke era of Hollywood

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Nobody would bet on an erotic thriller starring a maid in 2025, but ‘The Housemaid’ has shown that Hollywood can still surprise when it recovers genres that seemed buried. The film directed by Paul Feig has raised more than 137 million dollars against a modest budget of 35 million, becoming the unexpected success of Christmas. And that success says a lot about the political moment that Hollywood is going through. Immediate success. The success was so overwhelming that Lionsgate confirmed a sequel just 17 days after its releasesomething unheard of in today’s industry. The fascinating thing is that ‘The Maid’ does not invent anything: it unapologetically recovers the recipe of the nineties erotic thriller with its triangle of sex, money and deadly secrets. As Some critics have pointed out the film “proves that dead Hollywood genres still have life” if executed with conviction. For Sydney Sweeney, this triumph is especially significant after the failures of ‘Christy’ and ‘Eden’, which They threatened to derail his career just when he seemed to begin to establish himself as a star. Anatomy of an extinct genus. The erotic thriller was born as a mass phenomenon in 1987, when ‘Fatal Attraction’, with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas, raised more than 320 million dollars and spent eight weeks at number one at the box office. Five years later, ‘Basic Instinct’ raised the stakes with Sharon Stone and again Michael Douglas throwing us some of the most high-voltaic scenes ever seen on screen. It raised 353 million. He secret of the formula It was a mix of noir classic and explicit sex, with luxury mansions, a reformulation of the trope of femme fatale and continuous plot twists. The death of the genre. The fever unleashed an avalanche of more than 700 movies direct to video between 1985 and 2005, while screenwriters like Joe Eszterhas (of ‘Basic Instinct’) became millionaires. At the end of the nineties, the genre collapsed due to market saturation and because The arrival of the Internet democratized access to pornographyeliminating the need to look for eroticism in cinema mainstream. Until now there has been no possibility of resurrection for the genre because the post-cultural cultural changes#MeToo They made the genre’s tropes (dangerous women punished for leading uncontrolled, unconventional and, above all, undomesticated) sexual lives problematic. The (boring) icing on the cake: Hollywood reoriented its films towards family franchises that could be sold in conservative markets like China. Perpetual recycling. The film industry works like a cemetery with revolving doors: genres never completely die, they just hibernate, waiting for their moment. Romantic comedies seemed extinct last decade, victims of Marvel, until Sydney Sweeney herself raised $220 million in 2023 with ‘Anyone But You’. We have seen it before countless times: ‘Django Unchained’ became the the highest grossing western in historyand from those muds these ‘Yellowstone’. The musicals returned with ‘La La Land’ in 2016, and there we have its successor ‘Wicked’ as one of the sensations of the moment. For its part, nostalgia for modest budget horror It has gone from fashion to phenomenon. The cycle of life. And the pattern repeats itself: a genre is born, reaches saturation, collapses due to excess and exhaustion of the formula, disappears for 15 or 25 years, and is resurrected when a new generation rediscovers it without the negative stigma of saturation. The key is about creating hybrids that incorporate contemporary sensibilities into classic DNA, and streaming has accelerated this process, as platforms like Netflix allow experimentation outside the traditional systemwith less financial risk, since it can refer to niches that traditional studies ignore. The post-woke moment. December 2024 marked a turning point when two major publications (The New York Times and The Telegraph) simultaneously declared that Hollywood had entered a “post-woke era.” The NYT article was especially blunt in dismissing the last decade of diverse stories, celebrating that “we no longer have to pretend to like something just because it has the right politics.” The 2025 box office data confirms the diagnosis: the productions that have triumphed at the box office (‘Lilo & Stitch‘, ‘Zootopia 2’, ‘A Minecraft movie‘, ‘Avatar 3‘) are absolutely harmless in that sense. ‘The Assistant’ is a twist that goes even further in this trend. The film recovers archetypes that the era of political correctness had left behind: femme fatale seductive without feminist justification, explicit sexuality without any type of pedagogy, class conflict dressed in the garb of a thriller without a message. There are no characters written to capture demographics, just a dirty story (with no minority representation) about money, power and betrayal. Sweeney’s presence, raised a few months ago as anti-woke icon It’s not exactly coincidental. The lesson of the market. ‘The Housemaid’ confirms that what is old is new again when the public is hungry for something that the industry no longer offers. The female audience (which represents more than 55% of viewers of the film) has shown that there is a demand for sophisticated adult content that is not superheroes or family animation. While ‘Avatar 3’ and ‘Zootopia 2’ dominated with budgets in the hundreds of millions, ‘The Housemaid’ billed 133 million occupying a space without competition. The question that remains is whether we are facing a structural change or simply another passing cycle. Sydney Sweeney accumulates now three consecutive years with at least one commercial success per year (‘Anyone but you’, ‘Immaculata’, ‘The maid’), which suggests that he has found a formula. If ‘The Housemaid’s Secret’, the sequel, generates a viable franchise, it will have managed to revive a dead genre. Hollywood Cemetery, after all, has always been more of a warehouse than a definitive grave. In Xataka | We Spaniards have stopped watching TV, going to the cinema and reading books: the only thing that interests us is going to concerts

We are entering an era in which robots with AI are becoming increasingly popular. LG already has its own to help us with household tasks

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LG Electronics has CLOiD officially announcedits first multitasking home robot powered by artificial intelligence, which is being presented to the public for the first time at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. The goal is for this robot to be able to automate a good part of household tasks, going beyond the basic cleaning functions to which current robots are accustomed. Below these lines we tell you all the details. LG’s first robot for domestic work According to LG, CLOiD is capable of performing complex tasks like getting milk from the refrigerator, putting a croissant in the oven for breakfast, and even taking care of the laundry: from starting wash cycles to folding and stacking clothes once they’re dry. The company is demonstrating these capabilities in various domestic scenarios during the technology fair. The robot has two articulated arms with seven degrees of freedom each. The shoulders, elbows and wrists allow forward, backward, rotational and lateral movements, while each hand includes five fingers that move independently to manipulate objects with precision. The torso can be tilted to adjust its height, allowing it to pick up objects from knee height upwards, although not off the ground. An intelligent “head” as a control center The CLOiD top unit functions as a mobile smart home control center. It is equipped with a chip that acts as the robot’s brain, screen, speaker, cameras, various sensors and generative artificial intelligence by voice. These components allow the robot to communicate with people using spoken language and “facial expressions” on its screen, learn users’ living patterns, and control connected home appliances. Integration with LG’s ThinQ and ThinQ ON ecosystem allows CLOiD to work more fully with the South Korean brand’s products, essentially acting as a hands-on smart home hub. Physical AI Technology: VLM and VLA At the core of CLOiD is what LG calls physical AI technology, which combines two models: Vision Language Model (VLM), which converts images and video into structured language-based understanding, and Vision Language Action (VLA), which translates visual and verbal inputs into physical actions. According to the company, these models have been trained with tens of thousands of hours of data on household tasks, allowing the robot to recognize appliances, interpret the user’s intent and execute appropriate actions. The wheeled base uses autonomous driving technology derived from LG’s experience with robot vacuum cleaners and his Q9 model. According to the company, this configuration was chosen for its stability, safety and cost-effectiveness, with a low center of gravity that reduces the risk of overturning if a child or pet comes into contact with it. One more step in LG’s home robotics CLOiD isn’t the only robot capable of folding clothes showing at CES this year. SwitchBot is also showing its Onero H1 with similar capabilities. However, everything indicates that at the moment LG seems to be considering CLOiD more as a concept than as a product that they are going to really sell in the short term. The company says it will continue to develop home robots with practical functions and shapes for household tasks, and expand the application of its robotic technology to conventional home appliances. The ultimate goal, according to Steve Baekpresident of LG’s home appliance solutions division, is to achieve its vision of “Zero Labor Home,” “making housework a thing of the past so customers can spend more time on the things that really matter.” Autonomous robots with generative artificial intelligence are beginning to conquer technology fairs. They are the perfect setting to attract the masses, so it remains to be seen if they end up convincing enough so that in a few years we will see them hogging store shelves. Among other factors, the price will be what decides if the move really pays off. Images | LG In Xataka | The technology industry has been searching for the “next smartphone” for a decade. Now he thinks he found it with AI

We are entering a new era of robotics driven by AI and Disney is its perfect showcase

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For decades, Disney has been a pioneer in bringing its characters to life through animatronics, an already classic part of its theme parks that gives them that ‘magic’ that dazzles children and not so children. However, for some time now they have been working on going further with the help of the latest advances in robotics and AI so that the experience ends up being even more authentic. For this reason recently announced that Olaf, the little snowman from the Frozen franchise, would arrive in its parks as the first completely autonomous robotic character. As the company announced, Olaf will debut in the parks of Hong Kong and Paris during 2026. The interesting thing is that here we are not talking about a simple automaton, but rather its engineers have applied reinforcement learning and used the latest advances in robotics to accurately replicate the character’s movements. Olaf’s internal parts A controlled scenario. The robotics that coexist with us beyond experimentation have traditionally been anchored to functional and specific objectives, from industrial robots to quadrupeds that traverse complex terrain. Disney knows that there is a niche where they can take advantage of the capabilities of this technology to ‘give life’ to their characters and, how could it be otherwise, continue selling tickets to their parks. In this sense, theme parks become perfect settings for experimentation and development of advanced robotics, since they are controlled environments where robots can interact with thousands of people every day, learn from those interactions and perfect their behaviors, always with supervision. The technical challenge that Olaf poses. According to the paper published by Disney Research Hub (and the interesting video published on his channel), creating Olaf posed certain problems. The character has a huge head supported by a tiny neck, small feet with no visible legs, and a walking style that does not respect real physical laws. To solve this, the engineers designed a system of asymmetrical legs (one inverted with respect to the other) hidden under a polyurethane foam “skirt” that simulates its snow body. This skirt not only conceals the internal mechanics, but absorbs impacts and allows for recovery steps without breaking the visual illusion. Reinforcement learning scheme that applies policies to modify your behavior Just like they explain To the engineers responsible for its development, each facial joint, from the eyes to the jaw, is controlled by spherical and flat mechanical links that allow for full expressiveness while keeping tiny actuators hidden beneath the disguise. The key: thereinforcement learning. Instead of manually programming each move, the team trained Olaf using reinforcement learning guided by reference animations created by artists. According to explained Kyle Laughlin, senior vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering, told Variety “a process that used to take years can now be done in days and weeks.” Laughlin account that the system generates millions of simulations where the robot learns to walk, maintain balance and emulate gestures exactly as a child learning to move would do. But it’s not just about walking, since the AI ​​must also capture that spark of personality that makes the character recognizable. And for this, those responsible explain that specific rewards were used that rewarded the precise imitation of the original animated cycle. Noise and temperature. Two technical obstacles that threatened to ruin the robot’s credibility. On the one hand, the sound, since the robotic steps were too mechanical and noisy. According to they count Those responsible introduced an additional reward during training that penalized sudden changes in the vertical speed of the foot when touching the ground. In this way they managed to reduce the average noise of each footfall from almost 82 dB to just 64 dB, all without significantly compromising their gait. The second problem was overheating. And its thin neck houses small actuators that must support the weight of its large head, also covered by an insulating suit. The solution involved feeding real-time temperature data to the AI ​​system using a thermal model integrated into the simulation. Thus, when the actuators approach the 80°C limit, the system subtly adjusts the posture to reduce engine torque before any damage is done. A collaborative ecosystem accelerated by Newton. Behind the technological leap is Newton, a physics engine jointly developed by NVIDIA, Google DeepMind and Disney Research announced during GTC 2025 last March. “This is how we are going to train robots in the future,” counted Jensen Huang himself, CEO of NVIDIA, at the last GTC conference showing the technology. Newton allows you to accurately simulate how robots interact with deformable objects such as fabric or food, something crucial for costumed characters like Olaf, and is designed to integrate with MuJoCo, the physics engine already used by Google DeepMind to simulate complex joint movements. From BDX to Olaf. The Star Wars-inspired bipedal BDX droids, which debuted in Galaxy’s Edge in fall 2023 and have since appeared at events like SXSW or even filming scenes for the upcoming “Mandalorian and Grogu“, were Disney’s initial step towards this technology. According to Laughlin, the company has “a solid roadmap” to deploy more autonomous characters with greater expressiveness and interactivity in theme parks and cruise ships. This idea is foreseen in the plan announced by Disney for invest 60 billion dollars over the next decade on new attractions. Valuable data. The arrival of this type of technology to its parks It also provides them with reusable infrastructure. And the techniques used in Olaf, such as the compact asymmetric design, its thermal systems or its control based on acoustic reduction, can also be applied to future characters with equally strange morphologies. In addition, it must be taken into account that the robots would operate daily under the public eye at all times, something that becomes an advantage, since each interaction generates valuable data on how to improve their behavior. In the face of what seems to be an imminent arrival of new humanoid robots powered by AI, Disney can end up being a very profitable customer in this new era … Read more

Samsung opens the era of 2nm chips with the Exynos 2600. Chances are we won’t notice much

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Samsung has announced officially the Exynos 2600 SoC. This smartphone chip is especially notable for one particular feature: it is the first to be manufactured with 2 nm photolithography. The question, of course, is whether that will change things much. Why is it important. Node jumps in photolithographic processes are especially striking because they usually lead to significant improvements in performance and efficiency. By reducing the scale it is possible to fit more transistors in the same space, which in essence ends up giving us “more for the same.” The Samsung Exynos 2600 goes precisely in that direction. The data. Samsung’s new System-on-a-Chip (SoC) boasts above all of that new 2nm GAA (Gate-All-Around) manufacturing process, and is composed of the following elements: CPU: ten cores in total. The configuration features one 3.8 GHz C1-Ultra core, three 3.25 GHz C1-Pro cores, and six 2.75 GHz C1-Pro cores. GPU: Samsung Xclipse 960 NPU: 32K MAC What can we expect. According to Samsung, this new CPU increases performance by 39% compared to the Exynos 2500. The Xclipse 960 GPU manages to double the computing capacity of its predecessor and 50% more performance in ray-tracing. And finally, the NPU allows 113% more performance than its predecessor, which will allow you to enjoy AI functions in a theoretically notable way. 320 MP sensors. Another of the differentiating elements of this SoC is the support for sensors of up to 320 MP, in addition to offering zero latency for captures of up to 108 MP. Or what is the same: you take snapshots thanks to that processing capacity. It is also compatible with 8K recording at 30 fps and 4K at 120 fps with HDR. Less throttling. One of the most important novelties of these chips is Heath Path Block technology (HPB). This system improves thermal conductivity using new materials, which reduces thermal resistance and helps the chip maintain high performance for longer. It will therefore be more difficult for us to notice drops in chip performance due to potential overheating, for example in gaming sessions with the mobile phone that integrates this SoC. If that promise is fulfilled, we would be facing a potential solution to a problem that has traditionally been criticized in Exynos chips. Will we notice anything? The truth is that current SoCs are already true computing beasts in all sections and usually give so much room for maneuver that it is difficult to notice differences between them in our daily lives. That perception is misleading, because these hardware advances allow us to take advantage of that performance and efficiency “without realizing it.” Increasingly better photos captured and processed instantly, absolute fluidity in the interface even with high resolutions and refresh rates, or of course gaming in increasingly demanding games are scenarios in which these chips do their best. remains to be seen if Google finally goes ahead with its “PC mode”an area in which having powerful chips like this can offer a user experience much closer to the usual laptop/PC. Competition for Qualcomm. Theoretically, the Samsung chip will be able to compete head to head with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Some previous leaks That’s what they pointed out, but without a doubt we could be facing a great option for a market that will certainly benefit from that competition. Prepared for the Galaxy S26. Samsung is expected to use the new Exynos 2600 in its Galaxy S26 series, although it is not clear at the moment whether that decision will be global and will depend on the region. A global commitment would allow, for example, to integrate this chip on the Galaxy S26 and use Qualcomm chips only in the S26 Ultra, but everything remains to be confirmed. Of course, that type of strategy would be the definitive litmus test for Samsung Foundry, which in recent years has clearly been one step behind in performance and efficiency compared to its competitors. In Xataka | The Samsung Galaxy S26 will be much more than a phone for Samsung: the future of Exynos depends on it

Rosalía knows that we are in the post-woke era and she is reflecting it in every movement

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It is inevitable that every statement of Rosaliaone of the most scrutinized artists of today, raised dust. And as a woman with a success difficult to encompasseven more so. The curious thing is that she does not stop pecking at controversial topics: Palestine, Catholicism and, now, feminism. And of course, each of their positions entails the consequent wave of responses for or against. The question is whether his commitment to non-polarization is still polarization in itself. The conflict phrase. “I surround myself with feminist ideas, but I am not morally perfect enough to consider myself within an ‘ism’.” With this phrase pronounced on Radio3 Extra during the promotion of his ‘LUX‘, Rosalía once again evaded the issue regarding a conflictive issue. The Catalan singer has made ambiguity part of her business model, but it is not the first time: it is the second version of a tactic that she already put into practice five months ago. The pattern of neutrality. After the refusal of the Balearic designer Miguel Adrover to work with her for not speaking out about Gaza, Rosalía launched three paragraphs about the conflict without saying “Israel”, “occupation” or “genocide”. His strategy: vaguely condemn “what is happening” while arguing that “the pointing should be directed upward, not horizontally between us.” Some analysts they then observed that this form of protest is the complete opposite of activism (donations, NGOs, hiring of Palestinian personnel): a declaration of intentions without commitment. And it worked: after the statement, the controversy cooled down within a week. Adrover did not mention her again, the fans moved on to other scandals, and Rosalía was able to continue promoting ‘LUX’ without losing any advertising contract. In the age of the 72-hour news cycle, whoever holds out wins. And now, feminism. This verbal balancing act is repeated now: Rosalía “surrounds herself with feminist ideas”, in the same way that in July she felt “horrified” by Gaza: these are feelings without militancy. She protests when they pressure her for her silence, but It never gets muddy on its own initiative. And in both cases, avoid words that could be cited against him. It doesn’t say “Palestine”, but “what happens”, and it doesn’t say “feminist”, but that it is not “morally perfect”: it uses language designed not to remain. The importance of the United States. This linguistic engineering is explained by the key relevance of the US market, where controversies woke up in a particularly adverse climate they can sink careers (the commercial disaster of the new ‘Snow White’ after the pro-Palestine statements of its protagonist Rachel Zegleror the rejection of woke twists from brands like target, Jaguar either Bud Light). Rosalía has 70 million followers on networks and contracts with brands around the world. Saying “I am a feminist”, for example, automatically excludes it from conservative Latin markets or in Saudi Arabia, while the opposite position cancels it out in Europe. The solution: don’t say anything definitive. Let’s not forget that Rosalía’s business already functions as a company, a family business structure that turns over millions. Motomami SL entered 3.6 million euros in 2022 alone. In February 2024, Tresmamis SL was established, a real estate agency dedicated to managing properties such as a penthouse with views of the Mediterranean between Castelldefels and Sitges or a modernist apartment in Barcelona. Added to this are global contracts with brands such as Dior, Calvin Klein, MAC Cosmetics, Skims and Coca-Cola, which according to estimates generate between 5.3 and 7.2 million additional dollars annually. It is not surprising that each strategic silence protects an international investment portfolio. The Sydney Sweeney precedent. A clarifying precedent about Rosalía’s attitude is in the actress Sydney Sweeney, who in July 2025 starred in a jeans advertising campaign for American Eagle with the slogan “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” a play on “genes” that sparked accusations of promoting eugenics and white supremacy. Sweeney’s response was complete silence for weeks, followed by an interview for GQ where he declared with icy indifference: “When I have something to say, people will know.” He didn’t apologize, he didn’t qualify or explain. And it worked: American Eagle’s shares soared and she established herself as an anti-woke symbol. One more layer. Rosalía is applying the same tactic, but where Sweeney refuses to speak, Rosalía speaks without committing herself. And build an aesthetic alibi: ‘LUX’ is dedicated to historical female figures who are feminist icons (with their lace, as we will see): Joan of Arcwhich challenged patriarchal military and ecclesiastical structures; Hildegard von Bingenthe 12th-century Benedictine nun who documented the female orgasm in her theological writings; Saint Teresa of Jesusreligious reformer who faced the Inquisition; either Simone Weilphilosopher who denounced worker oppression. Rosalía can point out the pantheon and make her feminism understood through osmosis. Conservative turn. But there is more, and it is that refuge in more conservative aesthetics and discourses that do not fit with feminist statements. In ‘Motomami’, Rosalía cultivated a hypersexualized image: extremely long acrylic nails, school miniskirts, thigh-high boots, aesthetics that they became linked with the pornographic industry and hentai. With ‘LUX’, we have neutral colors, straight lines, veils, digital halos. It is what some have called “modest fashion“, associated with conservative religious movements. Rosalía goes from hypersexualization to Catholic devotion. The Catholic resurgence as a context. And as a final point of this conservative underpinning of Rosalía’s non-speech: religion is back in fashion. Although we are away from massive conversions that tries to sell Catholic propaganda, yes there is a “silent revival“which has caught on in countries like France or the United Kingdom, with more attendance at mass, Bible reading recovery and others celebrations among young people. ‘LUX’ arrives at the exact moment when declaring yourself spiritual but not religious is no longer countercultural, but mainstream. In Xataka | The real deal about festivals isn’t the music, it’s that you can’t bring your own food in. But that’s over

An era of a lot of free time is coming, because we will no longer have jobs

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Imagine a future where humans no longer have to work because AI does everything for us. It is an idea that has been in the mouths of figures of the stature of Bill Gates and Elon Musk, who believes that “working will be optional”. Now it adds Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024and his approach is quite pessimistic. An idyllic future. Depending on who says it and how they say it, the future sounds like a utopia where humans dedicate themselves to living life in a kind of permanent retirement. This is what is distilled from speeches like that of Elon Musk, who is committed to a universal basic income so that only those who want to work can work. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, and Bill Gates are not so forceful in saying that AI will completely free us from work, but they do believe that it will be the definitive boost to the four-day workweek in even three days. Or not so much… Geoffrey Hinton has joined the debate and, as we are accustomed tohis position is much more pessimistic. During a debate with Bernie Sanders at Georgetown UniversityHinton talked about the impact that AI will have on the labor market and his prediction is that AI will make human work obsolete, causing mass unemployment with unprecedented economic and social impact. A different threat. Technology has destroyed many jobs, but for Hinton this technological revolution is different from others because “People who lose their jobs will have no other jobs to go to. If AI becomes as intelligent as people, or more so, any job they can do can be done by AI.” He believes that it will mainly affect office positions, calls “white collar” professionssuch as analysts, customer service positions or junior programmers. Side effect. During the talk, Sanders and Hinton criticized the path that large companies are taking with billion-dollar investments in data centers for AI. “If you’re wondering where these guys are going to get the billions of dollars they’re investing in data centers and chips… one of the main sources of money will be selling AI that will do the work of employees for much less money,” Hinton said. However, he pointed out that this will have a collateral effect: “If the workers do not get paid, there will be no one who will buy your products…they haven’t really thought about the enormous social disruption we will have if there is very high unemployment.” The promise of AGI. For these predictions to be fulfilled, both the most optimistic and the most pessimistic, an AGI is needed (a general artificial intelligence that is as capable as a human being). AI companies have been around for a long time making us believe that the AGI is about to fallbut the promise of imminence seems more related to a need to finance the insane investment than to reality. The most sensible voices, such as Andrej Karpathy, suggest that the AGI will take at least another decade to arrive. Hinton admitted that AI still fails at basic tasksbut warns that we are still in the early stage and “it is improving exponentially.” Although in this case he did not give a date, according to previous statementssees it “quite likely that at some point in the next 20 years AIs will become smarter than us.” The impact of AI on employment. That AI takes our jobs has become one of the great fears of society. At the moment the studies that are being carried out point in different directions, from those that say that It’s barely impactingto those who say that it mainly affects the recent graduates entering the job market. According to the World Economic Forum report92 million jobs are expected to be destroyed by 2030, many of them due to automation facilitated by AI. However, it also foresees the creation of 170 million new jobs, also associated with the arrival of AI. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | AI and its impact on the labor market: how the perception of its arrival varies by country, explained in a graph

Images no longer mean that something was real. Welcome to the era of permanent visual doubt

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There was a time, probably less than a year ago, when you saw a picture on the Internet and simply believed it. You didn’t stop to analyze it, or look for its context. You didn’t think “is it real?”, you simply processed it as information, and moved on. That moment will not return. We no longer talk about deepfakes very hardworking people who deceive some journalist (of that We already warned seven years ago). We are talking about something much more banal and therefore more devastating: Your brother-in-law can create a photo in three seconds of you, completely drunk, at a bachelor party you never went to. Your ex can fabricate a photo of you in a pose you never had. A student can generate a compromising image of his or her teacher during the transition between classes. The question is no longer whether the technology is good enough. It is perfect, we are seeing it with several tools and with the recently launched Nano Banana Pro to the head. In fact, it’s too perfectto. And perhaps for the first time, technical perfection has come before social perfection. Who is capable of seeing the photo on the right and assuming that neither the woman nor the waiter nor the bar actually exist? Let’s go having to learn to do something different from what we have been doing all our lives: learn not to be able to trust our eyes. Our entire epistemology—from court testimony to family photo albums—rests on a simple principle: seeing is a way of knowing. Not perfect, but sufficient: For 300,000 years of human evolution, if you saw a tiger, there was a tiger. For 199 years of photography, if you saw an image of a tiger, someone had been close to a tiger. That chain just broke. And it doesn’t break little by little, with warnings and an adaptation period. It breaks suddenly, on any given Tuesday, when you discover that the viral photo you shared was fake and you ate it without hesitation. Or worse: when you discover that everyone has assumed that the real photo you shared is actually fake. What we are losing is not the ability to distinguish what is real from what is fake. That got complicated a long time ago. What we are losing is something more primary: the possibility of operating under the assumption that the visual is, by default, a reasonable starting point. There’s the catch. for a decade we become obsessed with fake news. We were worried about Russian bots, troll farms or organized disinformation. All that was industrial. It cost a lot of money, left footprints and required coordination. What Nano Banana Pro brings is different. It is artisanal misinformation, common at home. You don’t need an authoritarian government or a budget behind it. You just need a smartphone, whatever it is. We could combat industrial misinformation with fact-checkers and media literacy. How do you combat the fact that each person is now a printing press for alternative realities? How do you verify 10 billion images daily? You can’t. The least obvious consequence is the most devastating: we are going to beg for a lock next to our real photos. If anyone can make any image, only those with verifiable certification will matter. Encrypted metadata, digital chain of custody, institutional authenticity seals. Anything, but something. The photo without a stamp will be suspicious by default. Who is going to offer that certification? Google, Meta, Apple, maybe governments. The only institutions with resources to verify on that scale. We are going to pay them for something that has been free for two centuries: the presumption that what was photographed existed. Because the alternative – a world where no one can be sure of anything – is simply unlivable. But The worst thing is not losing confidence in the images. It is losing confidence in memory. Your brain doesn’t store experiences, it stores reconstructions. And every time you remember something, you reconstruct it with the help of fragments: smells, emotions, images. Photographs have been crutches for memory for decades. They consolidated the rest of the memory. And then there is exhaustion. Every image you see now requires a little evaluation. Is it real? Do I verify it before sharing it? Will I look like a tolili if I send her to the group? Another tab for our internal CPU. Our parents never had to do this cognitive work. We are going to spend the rest of our lives in suspicion mode. Not because they are cynical, but because they are rational. That permanent suspicion has a cost. In attention, in mental energy. Perhaps in a capacity for wonder. In the possibility of seeing something extraordinary and simply believing it. Never again. There is hardly a solution for this: You can’t train an AI to detect AI-generated images perfectly: it’s an infinite arms race. Each detector upgrades the generators. Each generator improves the detectors. Each higher wall is an incentive to lengthen the pole. You can’t educate people to “think critically” on each of the thousands of images it processes per day. We don’t have bandwidth. and nor you can legislate the problem because technology is faster than the law and more accessible than any prohibition. The only thing left is adaptation. Cultural and psychological. Our grandparents trusted what they saw. We trusted what was photographed. Our children are not going to trust anything that does not come certified. Maybe the blockchain It was also invented for this. AND When everything needs verification, nothing can be spontaneous. When every image is suspect, none is memorable. When reality requires constant authentication, we stop inhabiting it naturally. Photography died the day it became indistinguishable from the imagination. We will continue taking photos and we will continue seeing them. But They will no longer do what they did for two centuries: tell us what was real. Welcome to the era of permanent visual doubt. In Xataka | There is a generation … Read more

Here begins the era of visual and interactive AI that you will not want to stop using

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Today I have asked Gemini twice what it consisted of the three body problem. The first time I asked the conventional Gemini, who after thinking for a few seconds gave me a text answer, well structured but which at first scared me a little because it even included equations. This was what the response looked like: Then I decided to ask Gemini again, but this time taking advantage of the new feature called Dynamic View (Dynamic View). Google introduced this option a few days ago, and here Gemini does not respond in text mode, but visually. This was what the response looked like: So that I could understand that concept, he created a simulation where I could switch between different simulation modes and speeds. And after that, he complemented this simulation with short texts that explained what happens when there are only two bodies (like the Earth and the Moon) and when there are three bodies and the butterfly effect is experienced. The system becomes so chaotic and complex that triple star systems in the universe are unstable. I didn’t understand it as much with the formula, but with that simulation, I did. This is a clear example of where the tables are going in the world of artificial intelligence chatbots. In that future that Gemini proposes, the conversation can become—if we wish— much more visual and interactive. Almost like a game, because by modifying the simulation we can check the effect of that change in real time. It’s easier to “click” and understand the concept, and that, dear readers, is addictive. Google talked about all this in the presentation of the feature last week, explaining how this option “allows AI models to create immersive experiences, interactive tools and simulations, completely generated in real time for any prompt.” Well, indeed, this is how ‘How I Met Your Mother’ ended, although I have hidden the text so as not to spoil that ending for those who have not seen the series. If you haven’t done it, I recommend it 😉 The practical applications of something like this are, once again, almost limitless. One can apply these dynamic views to understand probability theory, to get fashion tips, or to remember how ‘How I Met Your Mother’ ended. Already put I have asked the impossible: explain to me the movie ‘Tenet‘. He tried it with a good visual scheme (the video below shows that interactive response), but it didn’t help me much because I’m afraid that movie is absolutely inexplicable. I’m not saying it: Nolan says it. Visual and interactive summaries take a few seconds to complete and are not suitable for the impatient, but once they do, the truth is that the answers do not disappoint because that interactivity and visual content enrich said answer and make it much more digestible and attractive for the user. It is the tiktokization of AI to make it even more direct. This approach from Google once again demonstrates how strong the company has been for a few months. The Nano Banana phenomenon turned it into a company that finally demonstrated its potential, and both Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro a few months ago like now Gemini 3 – which certainly seems to be a step above its rivals – have confirmed the optimism surrounding the company. This latest innovation from Dynamic View It is one of the most powerful and disruptive we have seen in the use of AI in these three years, and follows the path that the company has already outlined with the fabulous NotebookLM. Let’s go shopping with ChatGPT Google, of course, is not alone in that effort. OpenAI has been an absolute benchmark in the productization of AI, and with ChatGPT it got it right from the first moment in that user experience that made us want to use the chatbot for more and more things. The company led by Sam Altman has also been putting forward interesting proposals for a long time to be able to apply AI to all types of scenarios, and now it has come up with a new one that is unique these days of Black Friday: a “Purchase Research” mode that goes beyond finding products for us. And it goes further because it does not stick to our initial prompt, but rather asks us about that prompt. For example, I am looking for a 27-inch monitor with 1440p resolution (QHD) that is cheap and for mostly office use. And that’s what I put in the search engine. The surprises came from there, because in that mode ChatGPT does not give you the answer directly, but it asks you some more questions in “survey” mode asking yourself boxes to answer. Preferred connectivity? (HDMI) What budget do you have? (less than 150 euros). Which panel do you prefer? (I don’t care). After these questions, ChatGPT presents some preliminary options on the screen so that you can tell it if its results are on the right track or not (and if they are not, it asks you why, for example by price or features). After two and a half minutes, the chatbot presented an interesting personalized shopping guide in which it recommended me this Philips 27E2N1500L/00 that is 99 euros and that I will probably end up buying. Obviously this OpenAI tool is interesting for users, but also for OpenAI, because it is one more move in that strategy of becoming our indispensable ally for all types of purchases. ChatGPT wants to be a useful shopping assistant that helps us find products… and that along the way give a commission to OpenAI. We already saw it with Instant Checkout, and this is another move that points to that promising line of income for the company, which certainly needs it like eating. But beyond that, the Purchase Research mode is another good example of how these searches no longer stop at what we ask, but instead ask us questions to better understand what we want and then give … Read more

Hundreds of billionaires pledged to donate their fortune. The philanthropic era of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett has come to an end

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In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett teamed up on an unusual project: convincing hundreds of millionaires that They didn’t need half his fortune and they owed billions of dollars to philanthropic projects. Sounds crazy, right? Well they got it. However, the model promoted by these two regular figures in the top 10 with the greatest fortunes in the last four decadesappears to be reaching a tipping point. They are coming tax reforms and moral incentives are not supported by the always convincing fiscal incentives. The golden age of philanthropy among millionaires could be in its final stages. Gates and Buffett’s original plan. The project The Giving Pledgelaunched by Gates and Buffett 15 years ago, invited hundreds of the world’s billionaires to sign a non-binding pledge promising to donate at least half of their fortune to charitable causes during their lifetime or after their death. Since its creation, more than 250 billionaires from 30 countries have signed this commitment, adding a combined fortune close to $600 billion in potential donations. according to calculations of Business Insider. Despite the magnitude of the figures, in recent years the viability of this model of collective philanthropy has been questioned. Warren Buffett himself recognized in his last letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that its plan to engage and motivate the ultra-wealthy “hasn’t worked,” assuming the idea of ​​a golden age of mass philanthropy may be coming to an end. According to a recent report of the Institute of Political Studies, of the 256 signatories of the commitment to donate half of their fortune, only nine have fulfilled their promise. Open doors to philanthropy. The approval of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, a fiscal package that imposes a 10% tax to foundations with more than $5 billion in assets, has significantly altered the philanthropic plans of many billionaires. The withdrawal of tax incentives makes donations They are no longer such a priority for great fortunes. According to what he told Fortune Kathleen McCarthy, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society“The insidious thing about this is that it will seriously affect the large liberal foundations like Gates, Ford and Soros”, which contributed millions of dollars to social, health and educational projects. “Whereas conservative foundations are much smaller and will pay a much lower rate,” McCarthy stressed. New ways to donate. This new scenario, which alienates large foundations from the front line of giving, is pushing philanthropists to look for alternative ways to give and modify their strategies. “Billionaires will begin to look for alternative mechanisms when they realize that they are being forced to close their foundations,” explains McCarthy. Practices like direct donation practiced by MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, and her Yield Giving foundation are gaining ground. Your strategy: donate the money directly to the organizations that develop the projects. Without intermediaries or segmentation of funds. According to a report of the Center for Effective PhilanthropyScott has already awarded more than $19.25 billion to 2,450 nonprofit organizations. This is how Bella DeVaan, from the Institute for Policy Studies in the article Fortune“I think she sets the trend and is an ethical reference in the way of donating money, as Gates has been.” Buffett’s family legacy. Although the era of massive philanthropy seems to end, Warren Buffett has not stopped giving. With Buffett’s retirement as head of Berkshire Hathaway, the investor has delegated part of his fortune in donations to the charitable foundations of his three children and his late wife. Annually, the veteran investor has been distributing billions in the form of actions to strengthen the family legacy and ensure that its wealth benefits society. However, in his latest donations from the millionaire a striking absence has been noted: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already does not appear among its beneficiaries. In Xataka | The True Legacy of the Duty Free Founder: How Chuck Feeney Inspired Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Image | Flickr (Fortune Live Media)

We have returned to an era that we thought forgotten. That of the nuclear threat of the US and Russia launching their reply: Poseidon

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In recent days all roads trace a common landscape: from Moscow exhibit and test “superweapons” that defy traditional categories (autonomous nuclear torpedoes, nuclear cruise engines, and indefinite-range missiles) while in Washington the political and media reaction accentuates a dynamic action-reaction that could return the world to an (il)logic of open competition between nuclear powers. Someone should stop it. Poseidon. He Russian Poseidon has returned to the forefront as the epitome of the hybrid between a fantasy factory and a real military program: an unmanned, reactor-powered underwater vehicle, conceived to transport a nuclear warhead to coastal targets or naval groupings, operate at great depth and high speed and (according to the official Russian narrative) bypass conventional defenses. The impact figures published in Moscow (speeds between 60–100 knots, operational depth ~1,000 m, “megaton” capacity that some sources stretch up to 100 Mt) feed the symbolic dread. However, analysts remember physical limits and Soviet precedents that qualify both the real effectiveness and the plausibility of “tsunami” type effects capable of sweeping away cities. In practice. Thus, the majority agrees that Poseidon It is best described as a capability designed for political and strategic cost: suitable to reinforce a “second strike” or to be used as a system of intimidation, not necessarily as an everyday weapon in an escalated conflict. Burevestnik and a persistence. We told it last week. Along with the torpedo, Russia has shown the Burevestnik (a nuclear-powered cruise missile that promises essentially unlimited range) and other platforms that the Kremlin lumps together under the label of “invincible weapons.” These initiatives obey a logic of modernization that combines technological ambition, industrial vulnerabilities (sanctions, reliability problems) and media staging: the public demonstration of tests does not detonate charges, but announces theoretical capabilities and forces adversaries to regroup resources and doctrine. Continuity with the Soviet tradition of studying large-scale underwater effects and the historical experience with essays they show that ideas can persist even when physics and engineering limit their real usefulness. Washington’s response. The political reaction in the United States, personified by presidential statements about “restarting testing” and public instruction to military departments, has been immediate (and disorderly). The announcements arrive in a critical moment (with the New START treaty close to expiration and with China throwing uncertainties about its own nuclear growth) and can be read as strategic messages, instruments of pressure and, sometimes, as gestures directed at the internal public. One thing remains clear: Trump’s formulation was more than ambiguous and it is not clear whether it refers to nuclear detonations (critical/non-critical), increased testing of delivery systems, or increased sub-critical experiments and simulations. There is no doubt, this ambiguity is dangerous because conditions perceptions and responses international without the technical and legal scaffolding that a decision of shock would demand. Burevestnik How “nuclear” is prescribed. On TWZ Several experts consulted describe the practical path to resume nuclear detonations: The president can order actions, but execution requires the involvement of specific agencies (Department of Energy, NNSA and national laboratories), budget authorization from Congress and logistics focused on the Nevada National Security Site as the only realistic site for contained underground testing. In any case, the deadlines they are long: A “simple burst” could be organized in months, a useful instrumented test would require 18–36 months, and a new design development program would take years. Furthermore, the cost would be high and would most likely provoke retorts from Russia, China and others, reigniting a cycle of arms races that post-Cold War agreements had managed to tacitly contain. Technical dimension. The technical usefulness of returning to explosive tests to maintain the national arsenal is, obviously, discussed: US laboratories maintain that, thanks to advanced simulations, subcritical experimentation and vast historical data, the reliability of nuclear warheads can sustain without detonations. The tests would serve, in theory, to validate new designs and increase confidence in specific features. In practice, they would reopen the door to developments that amplify offensive capabilities and complicate the balance of terror, in addition to generating environmental and proliferation risks. The media theater. Plus: not everything is technology. There is a strong performative component. Putin and the Russian media apparatus have known convert essaysimages and statements in one power narrative which includes synchronies with popular culture (television series) to magnify its psychological impact. In Washington, the improvised communication from social networks it has a similar but less institutionalized effect: statements without clarifying technique or procedure can be interpreted as a political will to rupture and push allies and adversaries to take asymmetric measures. Geopolitical consequences. The costs of a back to testing are not limited to budgets: there is talk of reactivation of the nuclear race, of degradation of international trustor the erosion of regulatory regimes (the CTBT and the verification architecture), in addition to a probable expansion of arsenals by China and other actors who do not participate in treaties today. Added to this is the risk that the US internal debate (political polarization, legislative pressures and the dynamic of “showing” without a technical roadmap) will generate hasty decisions. Worse still, the media normalization of “anti-coastal weapons” or “Frankenstein” torpedoes may facilitate usage doctrines that lower the threshold for tactical uses of nuclear weapons, an especially dangerous prospect. Uncertainty. In summary, the news of the last days They are, more than anything else, a warning: we are witnessing the sum of three processes (modernization and Russian technological experimentationpoliticization and theatrics of deterrenceand American answers marked by tactical uncertainty and political haste) that, together, fuel a dangerous inertia. The question is no longer just whether Poseidon either Burevestnik are fully operational, it is whether the international community, and especially the capitals with decision-making power, will recover the technical prudence and diplomatic rigor necessary to contain the escalation. Image | US Space Force, Russian Defense Ministry, Los Alamos National Laboratory In Xataka | Last week, Russia launched its fearsome Satan II nuclear missile, Putin’s “invincible weapon.” It came out regular In Xataka | There is something more disturbing than “a Chernobyl”: it … Read more

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