happened

Emilia Clarke talks about her work in Marvel, Star Wars and Terminator: “it should never have happened”

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In one recent interviewEmilia Clarke reviewed her post-‘Game of Thrones’ career with unusual frankness. About ‘Secret Invasion’ he said: “I don’t think anyone liked the series.” On ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’: “The viewers were not happy either.” On ‘Terminator: Genisys’: “It should never have happened.” He adds: “But they were jobs I said yes to. I joined franchises that were already big and established. That’s why I don’t take it personally.” It is difficult to find a better summary of how the big franchise business works in Hollywood. Some collections. Let’s see if Clarke’s feeling that they were failures is accompanied by data. ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ cost between 275 and 300 million dollars and raised 393 million worldwide. According to is calculatedDisney lost about $77 million on the film, making it Star Wars’ first commercial failure. ‘Secret Invasion’ had a production cost of 211.6 million dollars, a figure known thanks to the transparency demands of the UK tax incentive program, where it was filmed. More than ‘Barbie’ or ‘Oppenheimer’ cost that same year. Viewership figures on Disney+ in its first five days were the second lowest of any MCU production, only above ‘Ms. Marvel’. Critical reception was equally poor. Regarding ‘Terminator: Genesis’, 155 million budget, collection insufficient to justify sequels that had already been announced, and weak reviews. It’s not the first. In 2021, with the MCU still dominating the box office, Anthony Hopkins summarized his experience in the ‘Thor’ trilogy, between 2011 and 2017: “They put armor on me and gave me a beard. Sit on the throne, shout a little. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s acting in front of nothing.” Chris Hemsworth came to similar conclusions: recognized that in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder‘ “I got stuck improvising and clowning around, and became a parody of myself.” This time, critics and the public accompanied him in doubts. Hemsworth has described the dynamic that he calls “the curse of the superhero,” which is simply that “you get pigeonholed.” But at the same time he rejects the attitude of actors like Clarke, who criticize Marvel when their projects don’t work: “They are successful movies: put me in one. Mine doesn’t work? Well, I attack them all.” What Clarke is really saying. The heart of Clarke’s complaint is that major franchises operate as hiring machines that offer global visibility and financial rewards that few independent productions match. In return, the actor’s creative control over the result is minimal. Clarke said in the same interview that in ‘Game of Thrones’ she received the scripts and did “everything in my power to understand and empathize with the decisions.” This was not the case in later franchises. Not just Marvel. The pattern is not exclusive to a single franchise. When actress Jamie Lee Curtis rejected in 2022 participate in Marvel projects, he did so with the same type of argument as Hopkins: “they will stick stitches in my body and force me to perform in some warehouse.” What does seem to be clear and Clarke demonstrates is that when there is a commercial failure, actors seem to feel freer to point out the obvious shortcomings of a system in which they are just more meat for the content grinder. In Xataka | I have detected the exact moment in which things at Marvel began to fail and that culminated in ‘Captain America’

Someone thought it was a good idea to bring a Bluetooth device called “Bomb” onto a plane. What had to happen happened

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Imagine that you are sitting in that modern torture chamber that we call “economy class” on a transcontinental plane when, after an hour in the air of the eight-hour trip from New Jersey to Mallorca, the aircraft turns around to land at the point of origin because the bomb threat protocols are activated. Now stop imagining because that is precisely what happened this past May 30 when the United Flight Boeing 767 that covered the Newark – Palma de Mallorca route thad to turn around with 12 crew members and 190 passengers of which one was the owner of a Bluetooth device with a peculiar name. “Bomb”. The “Bluetooth bomb” He United Flight 236 It should be just another conventional flight, but those who took the one last Saturday experienced an unusual adventure. When the ship was flying over the Atlantic and in a period Between 60 and 90 minutes after takeoff, someone noticed a disturbing detail: searching for Bluetooth networks, They found a device called “BOMB”. If someone was carrying a bomb with a Bluetooth connection, I highly doubt it would be visible to everyone and, on top of that, it would be called “Bomb”, but it was enough for the situation to explode. The crew, using the public address system, repeatedly asked that the Bluetooth devices be turned off, even threatening with turning around, but after seeing that there were still some lights left and that the “bomb” was among them, the maneuvers began. In coordination with the company’s operations center in Chicago, it was decided that it was best to declare a state of bomb emergency and return to Newark. The plane landed as if nothing had happened, but on the ground there was a significant police and security deployment that forced the passengers to vacate the ship, leaving their hand luggage behind. Image | Flightradar24 As part of the procedure, it was now the security forces that were going to be in charge of inspecting that luggage again. It has not really emerged what the device was, but what is clear is that there was no real explosive device. United has not given detailsbut different media indicate that a 16-year-old passenger had a device named with that name. Some say it’s a Fitbit, others say it’s a Bluetooth speaker. No details have been given about the consequences. that the passenger will have to face and everything has remained an anecdotal situation and a story that those 212 people will tell at some point. Now, there are interesting readings. The first is that there are devices for which you can change the name of the Bluetooth connection. For example, we can call our cell phone whatever we want, just like Wi-Fi networks, but there are others that are not easy to change the name of. A speaker or headphones usually have the name they come from the factory, unless they have an app that explicitly allows you to change the identifier. This is important because there are speakers like the Bombbox from JBL and, above all, the Hama Bomb 3.0 that have ‘BOMB’ in the name. Obviously, it doesn’t just say that and there are numbers and the brand, so it would be easy to deduce that it is a totally different device than a bomb. Also, if this were the case, the device would be turned off and not searching for Bluetooth all the time, so what makes the most sense is that it is a mobile phone with that ‘nickname’ for Bluetooth. That said, when the crew asked to disconnect the Bluetooth, if the person had headphones on they might not even notice and, if they did, it was a message that could be interpreted as “put the phone on.” airplane modeThere are cell phones that, when they activate airplane mode, deactivate all wireless communications, but there are also those that only deactivate Wi-Fi, the mobile network and leave Bluetooth to allow connection with headphones. This is for trying to find an explanation for a bizarre story like few others that had a happy ending for the passengers, being able to board a new flight the morning of the next day, but which could be very serious for the funny or clueless owner of the device. Because it is one thing to take longer to take off, but having a plane turn around, relocate all the passengers and the company pay compensation… is not cheap. AND I’m sure someone at United Flight isn’t happy at all.nor were those who were on that flight and who had zero information about what was happening, even having to go to reddit to find out about the movie and report the company’s compensation: a $15 bonus to spend on food. Moral: take a look at what your devices are called. In Xataka | Airplanes have circular windows for a reason. It took two plane crashes to find out.

Something strange happened inside the Earth in 2011 and 27 years of data have not solved the mystery

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In 2011, scientists observed an unexpected change in the flow of molten iron and nickel that makes up the earth core external. While its surface flow normally moves westward, it was detected to be moving just eastward. It was something totally unusual and mysterious. As a result of this observation, a study was launched, the results of which have recently been published. The objective was to know the reasons, but now there are only a few certainties and still many doubts. 27 years of observations. In this study 27 years of behavior of the Earth’s core were retrospectively analyzed, between 1997 and 2025. The core cannot be directly observed. However, its behavior directly influences that of the Earth’s magnetic field. Therefore, fluctuations in one can be detected in the other using satellite observations. It was seen that while the Earth’s outer core moves normally westward, there was a portion of it that went from a weak westward flow in 2010 to a much stronger eastward flow in 2012. It remained that way until 2020 and now appears to be starting to weaken again. Three options. When this change in movement was detected in 2011, it was thought that it could be due to three reasons. On the one hand, it could be a one-off fluctuation. On the other hand, it is possible that it is part of a periodic oscillation. And finally, it could be due to a way of establishing a balance in the circulation of the core. The only thing we see at the moment with the satellite observations is that the change was progressive. The behavioral modification began in 2010 and was already very clear in 2012. In 2011, when it was observed, it was in full transition. Other simultaneous observations. When analyzing the data from that period, it was seen that, coinciding with this change of direction, there were also some seismic signals that agree with the dates. Even geomagnetic shocks have been detected that correspond to a turbulent activity in the earth’s core. It’s not a whirlpool. This change of direction has not occurred throughout the core. For a start, the earth’s core consists of two parts: the internal and the external. The internal one is subjected to so much pressure that the metals are in a solid state despite the high temperatures. On the other hand, on the outside they are in a liquid state and, therefore, in motion. Even so, it wasn’t the entire outer core that changed its movement either. It corresponds to a specific region, located under the Pacific Ocean. It could be seen as a whirlpool, but these scientists have concluded that it is not, since the movement is part of a larger, wavy structure. Something like if an entire section of this part of the core suddenly began to move against expectations. Why is it important. The movement of the molten metal in the core generates electrical currents, which in turn give rise to a geomagnetic field that extends into space. Therefore, thanks to the movement of the Earth’s core we have an entire magnetic shield around the Earth that protects our atmosphere from the erosion caused by particles from the solar winds. For this nucleus to change its movement is not dangerous. We are not going to run out of atmosphere, because the core is still there. However, understanding its fluctuations can help us also understand the fluctuations of the magnetic field. This not only protects the atmosphere from erosion. It also helps us keep away a good part of the particles that could affect our telecommunications systems. Therefore, understanding how this shield works can help us prevent those more extreme events that do cause some technological havoc. That’s why, while this study has given us a lot of interesting data, it’s still not enough. We must continue monitoring the Earth’s core, what caused this anomaly of 2011. Image | THAT In Xataka | The Webb and Hubble telescopes simultaneously observed Jupiter’s auroras. The problem is that they didn’t see the same thing

With the RAM market impossible, the inevitable happened: counterfeit DDR5 tablets

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Make a reference to ‘The Simpsons‘At this point it’s complicated because the new generations may not get it, but there is an episode in which Springfield declares the dry law and, when they knock it down, the mayor asks the mafia how long it will take for alcohol to flood the city. The answer: five minutes. And that is exactly what is happening now with the RAM memory: where the market does not reach, counterfeiters enter Because after the DDR5 memories that are really DDR2 come the DDR5 memories with plastic chips. In short. The truth is that I did not imagine that we would reach a point where there would be well-crafted scams with all the intention of deceiving buyers of a RAM memory stick, but the truth is that we have been there for a few months. It was at the end of 2025, at a time when the RAM crisis was beginning to tighten (but it was far from the current moment) when it was reported that an Amazon Spain buyer received a kit of supposed DDR5 memory from Ireland that was nothing more than a DDR and DDR2 chip with a sticker on top. It was quite tacky, but you realized it instantly and you could always claim a refund because Amazon covers it in these cases. The problem is that there are scams that may be a little more ‘worked’ and that involve unsoldering the chips from a RAM tablet and replacing them with plastic parts. This is what, as we see in Digital Trendshas just happened to some users in Japan, who report the sale of memory tablets that do not correspond to previous generations, but are carefully designed to appear to be legitimate RAM when, as we say, it is a PCB with imitation chips. Or directly the entire pill being fake. An example of an auction stick ram. He original message It has moved a lot on Twitter and describes a full-fledged scam. Through stores like Yahoo Japan, users sell used RAM sticks as “junk” or “untested” in batches and at affordable prices. This is a practice that is also done with processors that we can find in stores like Wallapop and it may work… or it may not. That is why there are those who risk buying. In this case, a frog came out. The SO-DIMM modules (for laptops) had stickers that looked legitimate from Samsung or SK Hynix, but were nothing more than labels cloned from real memories used to cover the supposed chips. Instead of being DRAM memory as such, these are modules made of fiberglass that obviously do not work. In some cases, there are real circuits, but they correspond to lower-grade recycled chips. The important thing is that, be it one case or another, it is obviously not what you are paying for, but they are made well enough so that a person without knowledge cannot identify why the new memory module they have paid for does not work. Even a quick inspection can fool someone who has changed a few of these pads. It is no longer that they clone real stickers with their serial number and so on, but rather the dedication to produce those fiberglass “chips” screen printed like a legitimate one. One supposedly made by SK Hynix Another from Samsung (with SK Hynix chips, curiously…) One of the chips made with fiberglass Meteoric. Unlike the December 2025 fake RAM case, these pills are being sold in auctions on Yahoo Japan and there are already users with the fly behind their ear, which causes them not to bid and the modules to no longer be sold. But in the end it is the consequence of a market that is really impossible and in which scammers enter with promises of components at better prices than those we can find on the market first-hand. Because building a PC today is extremely expensive due not only to RAM that has been able to increase up to 400% in some cases, but for some SSDs that have also explodedgraphics cards that are beginning to be scarce and segments such as processors and the motherboards that are moving to the hoarder we’ve been talking about for months: AI hyperscalers. As I say, with prices through the roof, scams appear. with head. And (again, I didn’t think I had to give recommendations to avoid falling into a scam when buying a RAM pill), the important thing here is to have common sense. It really is like any other scam attempt: if the thing is too good to be true, we have to tune our antennas to see if they want to sneak it in. The first thing is to buy in stores and platforms that provide certain guarantees to the customer, but also look closely at the photos, compare serial numbers and ask for more photos from the seller if we are not 100% sure. And if the price is very good and we are not convinced by the explanation that the person may not know the market situation, ask as much as possible and do not trust the first thing they tell us. The RAM with a sticker that appeared in December last year. Image from VideoCardz. In the end, it is curious, but buying second-hand memory pills can become something that validates criminology, just like buy retro games on cartridge through Wallapop. Images | Taki, ri In Xataka | Nothing will be the same again: the price increase of the Nintendo Switch 2 in less than a year draws a new horizon

Someone has created an AI that knows nothing about what happened after 1930, and it has more use than it seems

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One of the problems with language models is that there is a cut-off date in the training data, that is, the model does not know current events that go beyond that date. Rapier In certain sectors it can be a serious problemis precisely the objective of Talkie-1930, a language model trained solely on texts from before 1930. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to talk to someone from the past, there’s an AI for that. A vintage language model. This is how These LLMs have been baptized who are trained with historical content. Talkie-1930 is a model with 13 billion parameters that does not have access to modern information nor can it consult the Internet, but has only been trained with books, newspapers and other texts from before 1930. To explore the model, the researchers had Claude converse with the model, evaluating his responses. The model showed great knowledge of the world, with many historical details of the time, and a great ability to imitate the style of Victorian authors such as Dickens, although somewhat limited in more satirical formats. More than a cultural experiment. Talkie is the closest thing to talking to someone educated in the early 20th century. This turns the model into a window that allows us to explore the mentality and culture of a past time and learn how society, politics or daily life were described back then. But beyond curiosity, Talkie-1930 also functions as a “control subject” to better study the functioning of AI and achieve important advances. Predicting the future. By being “frozen” in 1930, Talkie makes it possible to better measure how far a model can extrapolate and predict the future from historical patterns alone, without cheating with later data. To test this anticipatory capacity, the researchers showed up to 5,000 descriptions of subsequent historical events, taken from the “On this day” section of the New York Times, and measured the model’s degree of surprise. The result was that the model showed more surprise in the decades after the data cutoff, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, but then its degree of surprise stabilized. According to the researchers, this suggests that predictive performance improves as the time horizon becomes longer, but they point out that it will be necessary to train older models to be able to measure it well. Invention. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, raised a very interesting question at a conference recently: if an AI with a limit of knowledge until 1911 could reach the theory of relativity that Einstein discovered in 1915. In this sense, models like Talkie-1930 are a very interesting tool to observe its ability to generate new ideas that can lead to discoveries. No pollution. Is one of the problems that the models have trained with large corpuses of current data, in which the evaluation data itself usually also sneaks in and ends up causing their capabilities to be overestimated. With vintage models there is no contamination and that allows you to carry out very specific experiments, such as seeing if you are able to learn to program without having any prior computer knowledge. Talkie-1930 is open source and is available on Github. Image | Xataka In Xataka | A macro experiment has tried to find out if we differentiate real images from those generated by AI. The answer is not optimistic

Some Swedish scientists decided to drug salmon with cocaine and then release them. It happened just what was expected

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There is more than just fish and algae in the world’s rivers. More or less diluted amounts of chemicalsincluding pesticides, pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs. He checked it a few years ago a team from King’s College that, after taking samples in various parts of the county of Suffolk, in England, found cocaine and ketamine residues. Researchers have long known that wildlife is exposed to these compounds, but one question remained: How do drugs affect them in their natural environment? To find out in Sweden have drugged to dozens of salmon. Drugging salmon? That’s how it is. It sounds strange, but it is exactly what a group of scientists from Griffith University, the Zoological Society of London and the Max Planck Institute, among other organizations, have done. They basically took 105 salmon (salmo salar) from a fish farm, they divided them into several groups and added implants that supplied them with drugs. Then they released them. More or less as in the famous case of Cocaine Bearbut in a planned way. How did they do it? 35 of those salmon were implanted with a special device that slowly released coca into their bodies. A similar system was incorporated into others, although modified to provide benzoylecgoninethe main metabolite of cocaine. The third group did not receive any substance to act as a control. Once prepared, the salmon, all young specimens, were released into Lake Vätternsouth of Sweden. For eight weeks the researchers dedicated themselves to finding out how each group behaved. The specimens in the experiment wore a special tracking device, so (with the help of sensors installed around the lake) scientists could follow their trail and calculate how far they swam. And what did they find out? That the drugged salmon behaved very differently from the ‘sober’ ones. Especially those who received benzoylecgonine. After releasing the fish on the southwest bank of the Vättern, the researchers found that the salmon exposed to coca swam on average five more kilometers than the ‘clean’ ones, a considerable difference that falls short, however, when the specimens to which the metabolite was supplied are analyzed. They swam almost 14 km more, which led them to enter the northern area of ​​the lake. “The team found that fish exposed to benzoylecgonine swam up to 1.9 times farther per week than those not exposed and dispersed up to 12.3 km farther,” duck Griffith University. The agency also clarifies that the changes “became more evident” as the days passed, which shows that exposure to coca alters the behavior of fauna. Why is it important? Let the drugged salmon swim more kilometers and cover more space than others without ‘doping’ is more important than it may seem. These behavioral changes influence aspects such as what places the fish occupy, where they feed or the risks they face. More kilometers also translates into greater physical effort, which forces the salmon to look for more sources of nutrition to recover energy. “Where fish go determines what they eat, what eats them, and how populations are structured,” comment Dr. Marcus Michelangeli. “If pollution is driving these patterns, it has the potential to affect ecosystems in ways we are only beginning to understand.” But that was already known, right? Yes. And no. We knew that aquatic fauna is exposed to the drugs that we consume. The 2019 study in Suffolk and others, such as the made in 2016 in Puget (Washington), during which researchers detected traces of Prozac, Lipitor and cocaine in the body of salomes. We also knew that these substances alter the behavior of wildlife. In fact, scientists they already checked how water fleas exposed to coca swim faster or crabs are more reckless. The really interesting thing about the study carried out in Sweden is that it has allowed us to go one step further: to leave the laboratories, which were the isolated space in which these types of experiments had been carried out until now, and carry out research in natural environments and the same conditions that fauna is found. It hasn’t been easy. Although the team guarantees that the entire experiment has been done in safe conditions for the ecosystem and humans. Obtain all necessary permits, they confess researchers, it was “a tedious process.” And what to do now? Dr. Jack Brand, from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, recognize that more studies are needed to fully understand the consequences of pollution in rivers, lakes and seas. It is an important issue, among other reasons because the substance that has most altered salmon is benzoylecgonine, which has a special impact. “It was the metabolite, which we know is found in higher concentrations in nature, that had a much more profound effect on the behavior and movement of the fish,” warns in statements to Guardian. “This suggests that if we perform evaluations without including compounds such as these metabolites and their derivatives, we could be overlooking an important part of the environmental risks to which we expose these animals.” Images | Colin Davis (Unsplash), Katmai National Park and Preserve (Flickr) and Scazon (Flickr) In Xataka | In 2001, a yacht took refuge on a remote island in the Atlantic. Days later its inhabitants breaded fish with coca

If you are going to install air conditioning, remember what happened to South Korea. It was the architectural disaster of the millennium

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In the 1990s, some of Asia’s densest cities reached concentrate millions of people in urban areas built in just a few decades. In that same period, several studies began to warn that a significant part of the buildings erected during the great economic booms had serious structural deficiencies. In fact, in some inspections after major accidents, it was estimated that only a minority of buildings fully complied security standards. When you grow faster than you can build. In a few decades, South Korea went from the devastation of war to becoming an industrial and urban powerwith a speed of growth that was hardly unprecedented. Furthermore, during the economic boom in the 1980s, the country was chosen to host the 1988 Olympic Games, and an exorbitant number of buildings were built to meet these new needs. That impulse translated into a construction fever where building architectures mattered more than doing them well, and where practices such as cutting costs, accelerating deadlines or ignoring technical warnings became common. In that scenario was born Sampoong Department Storenot as a project exceptionally flawed from the beginning, but as a typical product of an era when progress was measured in square meters and not in safety standards. Air conditioning as a wick. The key point of the tragedy that was about to take place and that ended up turning the department store into the millennium architectural disasterit was not a single error, but a chain of decisions that ended up concentrating all the fragility of the building in an apparently secondary detail: the air conditioning system. As? Apparently, the equipment installed on the roof They weighed tens of tonsfar above what the structure could support, and their accelerated installation did not even follow normal procedures, as they were dragged on the roof, damaging the structure itself. From that moment on, a terrifying image: every vibration when you turn them on widened invisible cracks that toured the building. What should have been an element of comfort became a lethal burden that ended up acting as the final trigger for the collapse, concentrating years of accumulated negligence in a single point. The department store before the disaster Condemned from the plans. The disaster began long before anyone heard creaking in the ceiling. The original project It was a residential block four floors, but was transformed by Lee Joon, future director of the Sampoong Group, to turn it into a large shopping center without properly redesigning the structure. Plus: Due to bans in Seoul that prevented foreign companies from signing contracts in the city, these monstrous buildings were awarded to a handful of South Korean companies. Overwhelmed by pressure, companies decided that it was best to accelerate the pace of work, regardless of the cost. Thus, the diameter of the pillars was reduced from 80 to 60 centimetersand the distance between them was increased to increase the useful surface, columns removed to install escalators, its thickness was reduced to gain commercial space and a fifth floor was added that was never planned. Each modification increased the weight and weakened the resistancewhile companies that warned of the danger were fired and replaced by more accommodating ones. The result was a chaotic building that, on paper, no longer had a safety margin even before opening its doors. Cracks getting bigger. In the months before the collapse, the building gave multiple warnings that something was wrong. Visible cracks appeared, floors vibrated, employees felt dizzy, and engineers warned of a imminent structural failure. The management’s reaction was to close some areas, turn off the air conditioning at the last minute and continue operating normally in the rest of the building. The reason was so simple as devastating: Losing a day of sales in a complex that received thousands of people was unacceptable. Even on the day of the collapse, with cracks of several centimeters and obvious signs of danger, it was decided do not evacuate customers. Images after the collapse The collapse. On the afternoon of June 29, 1995, the building did not explode nor was it the victim of an external attack: he just gave in to the crazy number of negligence. The air conditioning equipment ended up passing through the weakened roof, the columns could not support the accumulated load and the building collapsed. collapsed in a matter of 20 secondscrushing entire plants on top of each other. More than 500 people died and more than a thousand were trapped, many of them in a space that, just a few hours before, symbolized the country’s economic success. It was a destruction so rapid that it turned a shopping center full of life into a mountain of rubble in less than half a minute. Images after the collapse An avoidable tragedy. Rescue efforts continued for weeks, with survivors found even more than two weeks later under the remains of the building. But the magnitude of the disaster revealed an even more disturbing reality: many victims did not die only from the collapse, but due to subsequent failures in emergency management. Meanwhile, investigations confirmed the most obvious: there was not a single cause, but one after another.accumulation of avoidable errorsfrom the use of low-quality materials to business decisions that prioritized immediate profit over any safety criteria. Monument in memory of the collapse Corruption, punishment and a system in question. The collapse not only destroyed a building, but exposed an entire system. Those responsible, starting with owner Lee Joon, were convicted, including several officials involved in corrupt practices, but the impact was much broader. Subsequent inspections revealed that a significant portion of Seoul’s buildings had very serious structural problemswhich forced us to review regulations and reinforce controls. The Sampoong ceased to be an isolated case and became in a symbol of what happens when a society builds too quickly and too badly. The legacy. Today, where the building stood there is no visible trace of the tragedy, but its lesson remains crystal clear. The disaster was not the result of bad luck … Read more

Something that happened 30 km from the North Pole six weeks ago is about to ruin Palm Sunday. The culprit has a name and surname

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There is a line that connects something that happened 30 kilometers from the North Pole six weeks ago with the foremen looking at the weather report on the afternoon of Palm Sunday. And that line has a name: a cold episode as real as it is unusual. -35 degrees at 5,500 meters. This meteorological indicator is a perfect summary: they are thermal values ​​typical of the harshest part of winter at the end of March. However, we should not overstate the issue as has been done in recent days. So what’s going on? The configuration is simple: a powerful blocking anticyclone is establishing itself between the south of the British Isles and the north of the Peninsula. That will channel a polar mass over the continent. Spain in particular will be under the influence of a slightly warmer branch, but (still) very cold for the time. Palm Sunday (i.e. March 29) will be the ‘climax’ of the onset of cold: The two main weather models in the world indicate -35 degrees. A good part of the eastern third of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands will be in full “climate January” during the first half of Easter. The good side. According to AEMETthe anticyclone will block the rains during most of the festivals. It cannot be ruled out that “someday something will sneak in”, but scant rainfall is expected in most of the west and south of the peninsula. What can we expect? That’s the most complicated part of all this. The context is complex: an exceptional winter (the wettest in at least 47 years), a historic number of high-impact storms (at least 19) and reservoirs at 83.2% of their capacity. But the underlying mechanism complicates everything even more. In early February, sudden stratospheric warming occurred at the north pole, fragmenting the polar vortex. What we are seeing now is a coherent scenario with that. Holy Week, in this context, acts as a media amplifier. What’s going to happen. Because make no mistake, the snow level below 600 in the north is going to collapse many roads (just when more people are moving), the uncertainty in the northwest is going to complicate life for processions and agriculture can affect many plants in full bloom. Now, all of this falls within the typical Easter ‘playbook’. So no, it won’t be a perfect week: but we certainly shouldn’t expect a “universal flood” either. Image | Tropical Tidbits In Xataka | The rain has transformed the driest desert on the planet into a sea of ​​flowers. It’s a sight to behold and a problem for experts

Huawei arrived at MWC as if the European blockade attempt had not happened. And he left as one of the great protagonists

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There are images that summarize geopolitical tension better than any official document. One of them occurred in Barcelona during the last Mobile World Congress. While several European capitals debate how to reduce the presence of suppliers considered high risk in telecommunications networks, Huawei appeared at the sector’s largest fair with a presence that is difficult to ignore. The Chinese company arrived at the event with one of the most visible spaces in the venue and left as one of the most notable presences at the congress, a scene that helps to understand the current relationship between Europe and the technology giant. The image. When touring the pavilions of the Barcelona exhibition center, it was quickly understood the weight that Huawei had decided to exhibit. As Politico tells itthe company installed one of the largest exhibition spaces at the event and located it in one of the busiest areas of the complex, a location usually reserved for the most powerful actors in the industry. During the days of the fair, that stand became a constant crossing point for executives, operators and analysts who toured the congress. Prominence also on the agenda. Beyond its deployment within the venue, Huawei also took up space in the official MWC programming. Company executives participated in different sessions of the congress and the company was among the actors present in the debates on network infrastructures and technological evolution of the sector. That role was reinforced with a recognition at the Global Mobile Awardsthe awards that are presented every year during the event. The award for one of its network infrastructure developments served as a reminder that, despite the political climate surrounding the company in part of Europe, its technological weight within the industry remains relevant. The European contrast. The scene left by the MWC contrasts with the political climate that has surrounded Huawei in part of Europe for several years. The European Commission has been toughening its discourse for some time on suppliers considered high risk in critical telecommunications infrastructure and has encouraged Member States to reduce their dependence on them. In parallel, several European countries have taken measures to limit or withdraw their technology from sensitive networks, especially in the deployment of 5G, with decisions in countries such as Germany, which has prompted the withdrawal of Chinese components in critical parts of the networkor Sweden, that banned Huawei from its 5G networks. The result is a fragmented map in which regulatory pressure coexists with a more complex industrial reality. Spain has not been immune to the European debate on Huawei either, although its evolution has followed a less abrupt path than in other countries. The Government has not decreed a formal ban, but the company’s role in critical infrastructure has been progressively decreasing. In the deployment of 5G, the large operators have been replacing their technology in the network corethe part that manages user communications and data. The result is an intermediate scenario: Huawei is still present in the technological ecosystem, but its weight in the most sensitive points of the networks has been significantly reduced. A resilience already known. The Barcelona scene fits a pattern that Huawei has been repeating for years. Following the sanctions imposed by the United States in 2019, many analysts assumed that the company would be relegated to a secondary role in the global technology industry. However, the company quickly refocused its strategy: strengthened its domestic market in China, developed its own chips and opted for an independent software ecosystem after losing access to Google services. This adaptation process allowed the company to remain present in numerous segments of the sector, even in markets where its position had been weakened. The image that Huawei left at the MWC. We can interpret it as a moment within a longer story. For years, different actors have tried to stop the advance of the Chinese giant in the global technology industry. However, the company has continued to reorganize its strategy and maintain a presence in the sector. What happened in Barcelona suggests that this process is far from over. Quite the opposite: we are watching a new stage unfold in real time. Images | Huawei In Xataka | The US has decided to shoot itself in the foot and destroy one of the best AI companies in the country

The first four places have records below 8 and that has never happened

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The best score in the history of one of the most difficult exams in the country has been obtained by a 41-year-old doctor with an academic record of 6.7. That phrase explains in a simple way why MIR 2026 has become in a detective movie. While the MIR Spain Association (AME) has requested an audit to the Ministry and there is anonymous testimony that accuses the applicant of copying, the interested party he denies it and offers himself to any verification. It’s morbid. It’s juicy. But it is much more than that. A statistical anomaly… According to the AME, the Ministry’s history shows that there is an abnormal pattern. In 2025the best position with a record of 6.75 was 1458. In 2024, it was 1374. This year, that position is 1. We have to go to 2021 to find something that high and it fell below position 200. But the anomalies do not stop there. According to the AME, the first four positions have records below 8 and no, it is not normal. Something strange had been seen at MIR 2025, but now the situation has become generalized. That is to say, the problem goes beyond whether number 1’s colleagues believe that she has copied or not. …which shows a systemic problem. And, although the Ministry has not yet commented on the matter, the truth is that the problems are piling up. He MIR 2026 is already accumulating delays in the admitted listserrors in academic scales, several resignations from the expert committeeetc, etc, etc. However, the “most difficult exam in Spain” has had problems for years. And it’s not even a Spanish problem. Last year, Argentina found a 33.6% increase in the highest grades with no apparent correlation with previous academic records. 141 applicants were forced to take the exam again and, although none of them achieved their previous scorethere were about 20 that were reported by the Ministry. The interesting thing about all this is the questions that remain open. Because if widespread fraud is demonstrated, this is not about a suspicious person, it is about an entire evaluation system that has entered into crisis; that must be reinvented from the roots. Can we examine today in the same way as before? Image | Duonguyen In Xataka | Artificial intelligences are close to beating doctors in the most difficult thing: understanding patients

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