history

FIFA has turned the 2026 World Cup into the most expensive cultural event in history because it has become a new Ticketmaster

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For almost a century, FIFA has not cared about selling cheap tickets: the money in football was in television. But as has happened with the musiccinema and other cultural events, spectacularization is the order of the day, and for the 2026 World Cup the business model is closer to Ticketmaster. Direct consequence: two US attorneys general have already asked him for explanations through judicial means. Pocho record. The World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada starts this Thursday, becoming the most expensive cultural event in history. The cheapest ticket to the group stage cost an average of $200 and the most affordable ticket to the final started at $2,030. Adjusted for inflation, the price is double that of Qatar 2022 and quadruple that of the United States 1994. Because. The reason is more than obvious: for the first time, FIFA controls ticket sales directly, without delegating it to local organizers, and has launched dynamic prices. Between October and April made at least one category more expensive in 95 of the 104 gameswith an average increase of 35%. The Category 1 ticket for the final went from $6,730 to $10,990. Other niceties. Another novelty this year that is not going down well with fans is that the buyer does not choose a seat either. You pay for a category that corresponds to an area of ​​the stadium and FIFA assigns you a row and seat months later. For example, in April many fans who had paid for Category 1 discovered that their seats were in areas previously marked as Category 2, because FIFA had modified the maps and reserved the best seats for a new “Front Category 1”. More expensive, of course. The law. The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey have judicially summoned to FIFA to investigate your sales practices; The one in New Jersey accuses the agency of turning the purchase into a labyrinth of “false scarcity.” California had previously sent its own letter of request. Justice accuses FIFA of setting up its own secondary market without price caps in the United States and Canada: as explained your own support pagecharges a commission of 15% to the seller and another 15% to the buyer. Only in Mexico does it limit resale to the original price, and by legal requirement. On that platform there have been tickets for the final listed by more than two million dollars. The opacity does the rest. FIFA has almost never reported how many tickets were left per match or per phase, and before publishing any price it sold tens of thousands of “Right to Buy” tokens through its crypto collectibles platform: hundreds of dollars for the right to buy a ticket whose final cost was not known until much later. More opacity: in February, FIFA president Gianni Infantino stated that all matches were sold out. His own organization had to correct himand in April acknowledged that about five of the planned 6.7 million tickets had been sold and that the rest were being held for “continued sales.” Different ticketing experts identify this retention as a classic tactic to create a sensation of demand. Although it is not clear if the play has given the expected results: the United States’ debut against Paraguay accumulated 10,000 entries listed on resale platformsa, many below the original price. The accounts come out. Wow, they come out: in Qatar 2022 the box office contributed about 950 million dollars; for 2026 FIFA budget up to 3,000 million for tickets and VIP packages (premium entry plus experience). The organization foresees earn 8.9 billion with the tournament within a four-year cycle of 13,000 (which is how FIFA organizes its accounts) in the most optimistic calculations. There are those who consider that this calculation even falls short: an academic analysis It projects that the box office and VIP experiences alone will exceed 7.4 billion, and to that would be added TV rights, sponsorships and other income. One but. The Economist It points, however, to a very specific problem this year: the public in the fields is part of the television product that FIFA sells around the world for more than 4 billion dollars. It must be remembered that in the Club World Cup, spectators had to be relocated in front of the cameras in half-empty matches to keep up appearances. All of this underlines the idea that FIFA is torn between a couple of businesses in which it wants to be the leader: squeezing in-person spectators and protecting the image of the spectacle that the rest of the planet sees. For now the eyes with the dollar sign are watching intently at the first one. In Xataka | How to configure your Smart TV to watch the 2026 World Cup in the best possible way

Claude Fable 5 is the most powerful public AI model in history. Also the most expensive, exclusive and frustrating

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When Anthropic presented Claude Mythos Preview two months ago, he did it with a singular message: it is so powerful that you will not be able to use it. That, of course, caused everyone to want access to it. Well: Anthropic has just introduce Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5its new AI models directly derived from that. There is good news, but also bad news. Like Mythos, but capped as a precaution. Anthropic already warned that Claude Mythos Preview was a spectacular tool for finding security vulnerabilities. That made it especially juicy for cybercriminals, so the company decided that only a few trusted entities (under its Project Glasswing) would have access to the model. That learning has now been applied, because in this announcement we have two different (and layered) versions of the model: Claude Fable 5: a model with all the capabilities of Mythos Preview, but with notable security measures that prevent it from being used for malicious purposes. As soon as the model detects that we are asking something “dangerous”, it avoids the question and even forces the use of an inferior model, Claude Opus 4.8. Clear examples: questions about cybersecurity or the development of biological weapons, for example. Claude Mythos 5: This version is somewhat less capable than Fable 5 in terms of cybersecurity, but will only be available to “a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers.” It is the natural heir to Mythos Preview, and according to its creators it is even better than the original version. Claude Fable 5 / Mythos 5 simply sweeps the most demanding benchmarks on the planet. There have never been more powerful models. Anthropic’s internal testing shows that we are facing the most powerful AI models in history. In all benchmarks – including the new FrontierCode programming, much more demanding than SWE Bench Pro – the scores of Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are simply spectacular, well above those of their rivals. The jump from Claude Opus 4.8 is really surprising, but it leaves GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro far behind (they don’t compare with the recent 3.5 Flash). This is a brutal blow to Anthropic’s table, and we will see how both OpenAI and Google respond. Claude Fable 5 is amazing. Ethan Mollick, well-known AI popularizer, has had access to Fable 5 for a few days and is amazed by the experience. With this model he has managed to complete projects such as east of the isochronic map that previous models had never solved, and it has done it almost “the first time”. In one of the cases Fable 5 worked for 9 and a half hours straight to produce a code called Concord of data analysis. Their conclusions are compelling: Last year (when working with GPT-5 Pro) I called him “work with a magician”: you recite the spell and something happens. With Fable, the spell has become so powerful that I’m no longer sure I’m the wizard. I feel more like a patron. I describe what I want, pay for it and evaluate the result. The conspiracy takes place somewhere I can’t see, in hundreds of small decisions over which I never have a say. Work has gone from being a process to being a result. I no longer direct; charge. The criticism is unanimous. Andrej Karpathy, who recently signed by Anthropic, commented on X how this is a qualitative leap that for him is of the same relevance as the one that Claude 4.5 represented in November. That model began the overtaking of OpenAI: this puts it even further away (at least, for now). Other tweetersemployees or not from Anthropic, make it clear that this is an important leap in the capabilities of AI models. It’s only been a few hours since the launch, but everything points because we are indeed facing a notable leap in quality. Consume tokens like there’s no tomorrow. But in the face of that fascination, the criticism. Discussions on Reddit reveal how users who have started using it have quickly detected the problems associated with this release. The first of them: Claude Fable 5 burns tokens like there is no tomorrow. Its consumption is enormous, and the quotas for Pro and even Max accounts run out in minutes if we use the model intensively. If it already seemed to us that we were exhausting the limits of the free or quick payment accounts, with Claude Fable 5 that feeling worsens: Fable 5 is fantastic, but we can barely use it often with the Pro or Max plans because those dreaded messages about waiting X hours to continue using it quickly appear. Extremely cautious. Anthropic has been very serious about avoiding misuse of Fable 5, and as soon as it detects anything suspicious it “brakes” and “downgrades” the model so that at that moment the one that is activated is Claude Opus 4.8 (which is not bad at all). The problem is that users are detecting that the model takes completely harmless prompts as dangerous. Although in Anthropic indicate Although these security measures are activated in less than 5% of sessions, what users are detecting is that they are activated much more. Fable 5 can get silly. Not only that: Fable 5’s own design means that if it encounters a prompt that it detects as dangerous, the model tries to avoid the response and automatically reduces your capabilities (‘nerfing’) without you knowing. It gets a little sillier on purpose, so to speak. As Anthropic itself explains on the system card, We have implemented new measures that limit Claude’s effectiveness in requests related to the development of cutting-edge large-scale language models (LLMs) (for example, in creating pre-training pipelines, distributed training infrastructure, or designing machine learning accelerators). Using Claude to develop competing models already violates our Terms of Service, but enforcing this restriction through our security measures prevents giving an advantage to those users most willing to violate those terms. Unlike our cybersecurity, biology and chemistry interventions, and distillation attempts, … Read more

If the question is what is the worst job in history, the answer is in 18th century England: the “sin eaters”

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Have you had a sinful life, full of vices and excesses, but you don’t want that to condemn you to eternal fire? No problem. You just have to make sure that, once you die, your family hires a ‘sin-eater’, a freelance that a small feast will be given on your coffin on the day of your funeral. A term will take with it all the faults you committed in life, no matter how serious or reprehensible they may have been. The ‘sin-eater’ charged for his services, of course, but… How much would you (or your family) pay for eternal life? It sounds strange, but the job of sin-eater It existed centuries ago in some regions of Great Britain. In fact, the newspaper archive allows follow his trail until the 19th. Sin Eaters? Exact. And it’s not a metaphor. Natalie Zarrelli, from Atlas Obscura, calls him “worst freelance job ever” and you’re probably right. The no eater (‘comesins’ or sin-eaters) were just what the word indicates: people who fed on the faults of other people who had died suddenly, without time to expire their guilt. They did not do it out of hobby or because they followed an elaborate (and dismal) medieval diet based on sacrilege, but because that was their job. He no eater He arrived at the wakes, participated in a ritual to free the deceased from his sins, and then left silently with a few coins in his pocket. Where did it exist? There is not much information about them, although references can be found in works such as ‘Brand’s Faiths and Folklore’ either ‘Hill and Valley’an essay published by Catherine Sinclair in the 19th century. In recent years, media articles such as Atlas Obscurathe platform specialized in religion Aleteia or (more recently) the magazine National Geographic. The writer and teacher Megan Campisi He also researched it for his novel The Sin Eater. Thanks to them we can obtain some glimpses of this ancient craft, which took shape centuries ago in Great Britain. And when did they exist? The ‘sin eaters’ worked mainly in certain regions of England, Scotland or Wales and their trade continued with ups and downs since at least the 17th century (some they go back even furtherassociating it with a heritage from the Middle Ages) until the end of the 19th century. In fact there is some reference to a no eater who died already at the beginning of the 20th century and his grave can still be visited today. His figure was based on a mixture of superstitions, paganism and Christianity, all against the backdrop of the religious changes that England experienced starting in the 16th century. In fact there is who slides that its role may have arisen in an attempt to recover popular traditions after the Anglican Reformation. What exactly were they doing? The ‘sin-eaters’ were the central figure of a relatively simple ritual that sought to erase the guilt of the deceased. The family of the deceased placed a piece of bread and a bowl of beer or milk on the chest of the corpse and then called the no eaterwho only had to do one thing: sit before the corpse and eat and drink the food that was supposed to have absorbed the sins of the deceased. A simple gesture with which they made other people’s stains their own. How did they do it? “He would sit facing the door. They would give him a fourpence piece, which he would put in his pocket; a crust of bread, which he would eat; and a bowl full of beer, which he would drink in one gulp. After this, rising from his stool, he would pronounce, with a serene gesture: ‘the peace and rest of the departed soul’, for which he would pawn his own soul.” relates a work published in the 19th century. After the mediation of the ‘sin-eater’, the deceased was supposed to be free of reproaches that could condemn him to hell. Of course, the opposite happened to him: those faults of others ended up weighing on his spiritual record. Was it bad business? It is assumed that the majority of the sin-eaters were humble people, with few resources, for whom a new day of hunger represented a much worse prospect than a supposed eternity of damnation in the flames. Although they only received a few coins in exchange for their work, the job was quite painful. And not only for religious reasons. Some versions They maintain that, by ‘devouring’ the sins of others, the no eater went on to become an outcastsomeone who blurred his soul. Was it that serious? Yes. A ‘sin-eater’ who is not very religious, atheist or even ‘infidel’ might not care too much about participating in the ritual in exchange for a couple of coins, a loaf of bread and a bowl of beer, but he knew that his work would entail an extra sacrifice: the “manifest contempt” from his neighbors, for whom he became a kind of pest, someone to avoid. The families requested his services, invited him to their homes, paid for his service and sometimes the no eater He even listened to the confessions of mourning relatives, but once the ritual was over, no one wanted to have him around. What was its origin? Difficult to specify. In her article, Natalie Zarelli remember that some theories relate the figure of the no eater with pagan traditions, others connect it with the medieval custom of nobles paying the poor to pray for their dead and the salvation of their souls. In a way, the ‘sin eaters’ are also related to other deep-rooted traditionssuch as the belief that living relatives can intercede for their dead, the figure of purgatory or the symbolic value of food. When did they disappear? In the 19th century, when Sinclair wrote his book, ‘sin-eaters’ were already on the decline in England, but that does not mean that they had disappeared. His trail can be followed until … Read more

China just launched a rocket without telling anyone. It turns out that it is the most ambitious in its history

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China has taken seriously that “first come, first served” thing. Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty states that No State can claim sovereignty over the Moon, Mars or any other celestial body, what does apply is that the geostationary orbital positions and frequency bands work as “first come, first served”. What does this mean? Well, the country or company that first registers and coordinates a constellation or a position with certain frequencies gets priority of use. This context is necessary to understand why SpaceX or Amazon are so interested in mass launching satellites into low orbit, and also why China has been accelerating the pace for months with their rockets in an aggressive expansion maneuver. So aggressive that finish of surprise and secret launch of a Long March 12B rocket with a double objective: to continue feeding its satellite constellation and to demonstrate that its reusable rocket can compete against the Falcon 9 from SpaceX. China and the space sprint This past Monday, the operators of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, in the Gobi Desert, had work. In the American early morning, a rocket Long March 12B It left for low orbit with a cargo of satellites that will feed the Qianfan megaconstellation. This is China’s response to SpaceX Starlink and it seems that the mission went well because the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation declared the flight a success. There is a double reading here. On the one hand, the Long March 12B is one of the responses to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It is a reusable rocket that has a first stage intended to land by propulsion on a recovery platform on Earth. It can transport 20 tons to low Earth orbit and this was its first flight… although was not done no recovery attempt. The other reading is that China is in aggressive mode launching things into space. It has been a very busy few months with different missions both in low orbit and in its Tiangong space stationbut the interesting thing about this launch of the Long March 12B is that people found out through social networks. When a mission is going to be carried out, whether it is more or less media-related, a series of prior notices are made to both the international authorities that control the air and maritime space in case something goes wrong. However, This mission has been carried out in absolute secrecybeing an unusual practice in both government and private programs. In the end, it is one more demonstration of what we were talking about: China has stepped on the accelerator to claim a space that can only be claimed by getting there and occupying it, and that is vital within the framework of user service (satellite Internet, wow) and, above all, for strategic reasons and technological sovereignty. Because it may seem that companies and countries want to bring the Internet everywhere, but the strategy is different: Controlling constellations and their orbital resources means controlling critical infrastructure such as satellite Internet, Earth observation, and military communications. Geopolitical advantage by arriving first in a space that the rival might want to occupy with other types of satellites. Arriving first forces the others to play on their board. And most importantly: the space you are interested in occupying is finite and everyone wants their land as soon as possible. In the end, this “secret” flight marks number 647 of the Long March series and is one more example that China is deeply involved in a new space race in which it competes directly against the United States, but in which Europe is also working to have something to say. In Xataka | Europe has almost ready something that, until recently, seemed practically a dream: its first reusable spacecraft

the last film directed by one of the greatest masters in the history of cinema

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Clint Eastwood turned 96 on May 31. And a bit of coincidence, with a statement from his son, jazz musician Kyle Eastwood (saying that “he’s retired now, but I’ve been very lucky to be able to work with him on quite a few films”), we’ve learned that Eastwood is no longer going to make any more films. There have been no official statements, but the retirement of the person responsible for ‘Unforgiven’ or ‘The Pale Rider’ leaves us with a filmography full of great films, of all genres and intensities. Let’s celebrate by remembering the last of them, ‘Jury Nº 2‘, released in 2024 and which you can see in Movistar Plus and HBO Max. ‘Jury No. 2’ is a judicial thriller with a moral dilemma on board, as Eastwood likes them: Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) is called to serve on a jury in a high-profile murder case, and discovers that he himself could be more involved in the crime than he thought. The cast is completed with a veritable array of heavyweights such as Toni Collette, JK Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland. The film is Eastwood’s fortieth as a director. ‘Jury No. 2’ was conceived originally as a direct streaming premiere. The change to a limited theatrical release It arrived after some internal passes that yielded very favorable opinionsbut he barely received advertising coverage from the studio, which was said to have resented the author for the poor box office results of ‘Cry Macho’. It was finally released, as was later learned, not only out of respect for the director’s advanced age, but in recognition of his 50-year relationship with Warner Bros. This stimulating thriller closes an absolutely exemplary career, always halfway between popular genres and auteur cinema, since the time of his international fame aboard some of Sergio Leone’s most significant titles. Between those first successes and his recognition by critics starting with ‘Unforgiven’ in 1992, there was the creation of milestones such as Dirty Harry and a series of absolutely superb westerns and thrillers, often directed by himself. He has spent this entire century praised by critics and the public thanks to films like ‘Million Dollar Baby’ or ‘Mystic River’. In Xataka | Rafa Nadal won 22 Grand Slams and lost 18 more due to injury: the documentary that explores those last ones arrives on Netflix today

2026 will be a historic year for smartphones. The worst year in history, specifically

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The smartphone market is touched. That of technology, in general, with the brands themselves warning months ago about what was coming and encouraging us to anticipate technological purchases in the coming years as soon as possible. The rise of artificial intelligence and the Big Tech fever for building data centers has broken the consumer market with increasingly expensive computers, inaccessible components and the disappearance of the “cheap mobile”. Because 2026 is not being a good year to buy technology to the point that there is already talk of the worst year in history for smartphones. Disaster in sight. We already knew that 2026 was going to be bad, but now the analyst firm Counterpoint Research has revised their forecasts to point out something interesting: it will be worse than we expected. If in February they pointed to a drop in the year-on-year volume of smartphone shipments this year of 12.4%, they have now revised those forecasts to go a little further: up to 13.9%. This implies that this year some 1,080 million mobile phones will be shipped, which seems like a lot, but it represents 174 million fewer devices than in 2025. The translation is that it will be the lowest annual volume since 2013, when everything was field, experimentation and the newest smartphones continued to coexist with strange proposals and ‘dumb phones’. No options. The reason is the persistence of the component crisis, mainly storage and RAM memory. The acceleration of Big Tech to build more AI infrastructure is causing himcomponent production lines For the consumer sector (in which mobile phones are found) it does not have components or has to buy them much more expensively. This, evidently, causes the sales price of the device to increase. The impact is there because the memory represented 20% of the manufacturing invoice for an entry mobile. Now that percentage rises to 40% or more and, although everything increases in price or does not improve as it should from one generation to the next to cushion the impact, manufacturers really do not have many more options. The calculations are there and they make the new mobile phones less attractive. In the entry range – increments of 30 dollars per unit. In the mid range – from 60 to 80 dollars per unit. In the premium – 100 and 150 dollars per unit. Strategy. These manufacturers have two options on the table. Or they don’t launch new devices this year, something that some industry giants have already targetedensuring that the situation will cause some companies to fall by the wayside because their business depends directly on the devices… or they launch new models, but without better specifications and more expensive. It is estimated that smartphone prices worldwide increased by 14% during the first quarter of this year, with a shortage hitting the entry and mid-range segment harder than that of more premium mobile phones. The reason is that in the mid-range the margins are tighter and in the premium it is other components that raise the bill (cameras or screens, for example), in addition to having wider margins. In figures. It is affordable mobile phones that are bearing the brunt, with a 46% drop in shipments in this first quarter due to the reduction in the supply of LPDDR4 memory. In fact, Samsung is one of the largest on the market and already pointed out weeks ago that they were going to abandon the LPDDR4 to focus on the LPDDR5 which is better, but also more expensive. An example with first and last names is Galaxy A57a mobile that exemplifies this price increase in the mid-range because one GB of RAM is already worth twice as much as three months ago. To contextualize this, let’s go with some figures: Apple (premium segment) – stable shipments. Samsung (all segments, but strong presence in premium) – 4% drop. Xiaomi (all segments, but more in the mid-range) – 20% drop. Honor (all segments, but more in the mid-range) – 28% drop. Transsion (especially entry range) – 32% drop. No recovery on the horizon. The good news? Really, there is no good news. Coaunterresearch Point is just one source, but a forecast Parallel to IDC, which also contemplates this drop in shipments of 13.9%, points to an additional 1.1% of 1.1%. It is in 2028 when the situation is expected to begin to improve, but without returning to the state we had just two years ago. It will be a slow recovery and the market will suffer more in those areas where there is a greater concentration of mobile phones that move around 200 euros. It is, as we said months ago, the disappearance of the cheap mobile in favor of a more resilient high-end and premium because of what we commented about sales margins. But hey, in the end, it is a situation that we are seeing in all consumer devices. Apple is discontinuing options for its Macs with certain memory combinations, the Steam Deck just went up 300 euros suddenly, The Raspberry Pi has increased tremendously and it is not known when they will come out Steam MachinePS6 or Xbox Project Helix because no one wants to compromise. The only thing we know about the new Xbox is what its new CEO said: It will be expensive due to the component crisis. In Xataka | Samsung is doing so well that its workers threatened to strike if it didn’t distribute benefits. And they have won

Brussels has just fined Temu the largest fine in its history with the Digital Services Law: 200 million euros

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This Thursday, the European Commission sanctioned the Chinese e-commerce platform with the largest fine imposed so far under the Digital Services Law. Brussels considers that Temu has not been able to detect or stop the sale of dangerous items reaching European consumers, from chargers to baby toys. What exactly happened. Brussels accuses Temu of “not having identified, analyzed or evaluated with due diligence the systemic risks” derived from offering illegal products on its website, ensuring that this practice entails “potential harm” to EU users. This violates the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European regulation that forces large platforms to monitor what circulates through their services. The 200 million exceed the 120 that prevailed over the social network last December, so far the highest penalty under this regulation. No filters. The Commission maintains that this is not a specific case of defective products, but rather a failure in the platform’s own security system. In the words of the Executive“the evidence collected indicates that European consumers are very likely to encounter illegal items in Temu.” The problem, therefore, would not be in a specific seller, but in the company’s inability to filter what it sells. In detail. The research has been supported by several sources. The main one was a “secret shopping” exercise commissioned from an independent contractor, who has carried out laboratory tests on items chosen at random. The results, according to Brusselswere worrying in three categories: Electric chargers: a very high percentage did not pass basic safety tests, with the risk of short circuits and burns. Toys and objects for babies: Many presented medium or high severity hazards, either because they contained chemicals above legal limits or because of the risk of suffocation due to detached parts. Jeweler’s: Irregularities were also detected. According to the statement, these data were compared with customs controls of the Member States and with the European market surveillance database (ICSMS). The three routes, according to the Commission, showed “high or very high” percentages of non-compliant products, although the organization has decided not to publish the exact figures. Product bombing. In addition to the products, Brussels focuses on the technology of the platform. The Commission criticizes that Temu did not evaluate how the design of its own service (recommendation systems and promotional campaigns run by affiliated influencers) could be amplifying the dissemination of these articles. Furthermore, according to the agency, the company based its 2024 risk assessment on generic information from the sector and not on evidence on its own website, ignoring external studies (such as reports from consumer associations in Denmark and Finland) that already warned of the problem. What Brussels says. “Temu’s risk assessment underestimates specific risks, lacks detail, is not based on solid evidence and is not comprehensive,” counted the vice president of the Commission responsible for Technological Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen. The Finnish commissioner insists that these analyzes “are not mere bureaucratic procedures”, but the backbone of the DSA. How much does the fine weigh? Although the figure is relatively large, represents only 0.38% of Temu’s estimated turnover for 2025 (calculated at around €53 billion), very far from the 6% limit allowed by regulations. The Commission justifies this moderation because the sanction is “proportionate” to other aspects that remain under investigation. The situation has been brewing since 2024based on complaints from the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and 17 of its national associations. And now what. Temu has three months to pay and until August 28 of this year to submit a “corrective action plan.” That document will then be reviewed by the European Committee for Digital Services, which will have one month to issue a response. After that, the Commission will have another month to set the final decision and on what date the fine will be applied. If the company does not correct course, it is exposed to periodic fines (daily, weekly or monthly) until it complies. The company can appeal to the European courts, but Brussels has already warned that the fine is final and does not intend to lower it even if the company corrects its behavior. Cover image | François Genon and own assembly In Xataka | Europe is already cherishing what was always a dream: the industrial manufacturing of qubits for quantum machines

College students are getting more A’s than at any other time in history. There is a suspect

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Some already call it “grade inflation.” It is a phenomenon that should make us happy—what grades our young people get—but that is increasingly worrying in the educational world. University students have never gotten as many A’s as they have until now, but in reality the credit is not theirs. Using ChatGPT and other AI tools It is distorting its capacity and putting the educational system at a global level in check (again). Note inflation. Igor Chirikov published in May 2026 a study in which he talked precisely about how artificial intelligence is causing grade inflation. In his research, he analyzed the data of half a million students in 319 subjects at the University of Texas, and detected something surprising: since 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the number of outstanding students at that institution has grown by 30%. But not everyone gets the same grade. In his conclusions, Chirikov explained how “these increases” in the grade “were greater when homework had a greater influence on the grades, which is consistent with the theory that AI is replacing the student’s work, and not improving learning.” The effect is greater, for example, in courses such as Economics or Journalism, where there are many written assignments to be submitted, but also in Computer Science courses and others in which programming subjects are taught. Both ChatGPT and other AI models are an increasingly popular (and effective) tool for students who want to improve their grades at all costs. perfect homework. The researchers indicate that a displacement of cognitive tasks is occurring here. The student no longer uses technology to support the learning process, but rather completely delegates many of the tasks that he should do to the AI. Essays, research papers and programming practices What should they give to teachers? They are becoming more and more perfect. Mirage. That theoretical brilliance is a mirage. Controlled studies like this one reveal that students who systematically use AI in their assignments end up suffering a 17% drop in their grades when they are subjected to a classic in-person pencil and paper exam on the same subject. ChatGPT becomes a superpower, but without it, grades drop clearly. The problems grow. Grade inflation is not a new phenomenon. In the US, university centers suffer structural pressures: if they are strict, they receive criticism from students, which jeopardizes future students wanting to attend them. This contributed to the fact that at Harvard, for example, A’s went from representing 24% of grades in 2005 to 60.2% in the spring of 2025. ChatGPT, write me my TFG. In Spain and Europe the panorama is similar. 89% of university students admit to using AI to write reports or Final Degree Projects (TFG), according to a recent GoStudent survey. Meanwhile, 61% of teachers confess that they do not have tools or software to confirm that whoever has done a job has not done it with AI. They are all too good students. When the outstanding becomes something totally normal and so frequent, this grade loses its power of differentiation. The filter previously made it clear which students were exceptional, something that was also vital for companies’ search for talent. Now those looking for these talents have reacted: in the US, job portals such as HandShake show that job offers that require a minimum GPA (average score of the university degree) of 3.5 out of 4 have skyrocketed from 9% in 2020 to 25% in 2026. As all university students are exceptional, companies look for the most exceptional among the exceptional. No more A’s. This distrust of job and homework qualifications has made some institutions prefer to return to the past. harvard will apply a notable reform in fall 2027 and will limit outstanding grades to a maximum of 20% per course, while honors enrollment will also depend on a certain percentile instead of via grades. 85% of the students opposed to these measures, but at Harvard they will continue with the measures although they indicate that they will review their application three years after the start of their application. everyone cheats. At the prestigious Princeton University the phenomenon is equally worrying. About half of its students They used AI to write their essays. 15% admitted to using AI to cheat in school, and 65.5% “knew a classmate was cheating and did not report it.” Everyone seems to be cheating at the university, as indicated in an article in The New York Intelligencer as early as May 2025. The university has just approved a proposal that would allow supervised exams, something that would break a 133-year tradition in which the students themselves monitored each other to prevent others from cheating. The “Code of Honor” of this institution has not been able to with the avalanche of AI. Image | Christian Lendl In Xataka | Something is happening in the computer science major in Silicon Valley: enrollment falls for the first time in 20 years

One of the best science fiction series in history is animated, and today it returns to HBO Max with new episodes

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In 2013, Adult Swim premiered a series about an alcoholic scientist and his teenage grandson traveling the multiverse. ‘Rick and Morty‘ seemed like another hooligan animated series, but it became, for reasons that have a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time, into one of the most relevant television phenomena of the last two decades. The ninth season has just arrived HBO Maxand everything indicates that they are going to give us more of the same. Which in the case of ‘Rick and Morty’ is always excellent news. Season 7, released in 2023, was the first without Justin Roiland, one of the series’ co-creators. Adult Swim cut ties with him in January of that year following criminal domestic violence charges (ultimately dismissed) and the ‘Rick and Morty’ characters, voiced by him, were reassigned to other actors (and if you didn’t know it, it would be impossible for you to detect it). The public reaction was cold, and it ended up having the lowest score in the series’ history on Rotten Tomatoes. The eighth season, broadcast in 2025, was proof that the series could survive trauma. It started with 100% among critics and its public score reached 93%, which finally stabilized at 79%. A considerable improvement over the previous year and more in line with the series average. Now comes the time to confirm that, indeed, the series has overcome past traumas. And he does it in a big way: with the return of Evil Morty and with the introduction of a new cosmic entitythe Collective. Furthermore, this return is accompanied by other news: Warner Bros. is in the first stages of development of a feature film. Its possible director, Jacob Hair, has helmed several episodes since 2019 and is the current supervising director of the series. According to the co-creator of the series, Dan Harmon, the intention is to invest more money and make a 90-minute episode, no more, no less. It may not seem too ambitious, but let’s not forget that we are facing one of the best science fiction series of all time. In Xataka | Five years later, there is a Netflix series so well made that psychologists recommend it to understand mental health

Today the culmination of one of the most famous series in the history of Spain arrives on Prime Video in an ironic closing format

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When the series ‘Aída’ ended in June 2014 with four million viewers saying goodbye, no one seriously considered a sequel. A decade later, Paco León turns that reunion into metacinema with ‘There and back’which now premieres Prime Videoa film that functions as another chapter, but also as a question about what it means to revisit something that has not completely disappeared from collective memory. It is clear that the dizzying audience figures for ‘Aída’ belong to another era, when audience fragmentation was not as great as it is now. At one of its peaks, the series reached 33.2% share and 6,282,000 spectators. Throughout its nine years on screen, the series led the audience in its first two seasons; During the 2006-2007 season it was the most viewed Spanish fiction, and in the following season it not only maintained the leadership, but did so above foreign productions. ‘There and back’ arose as a commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the end of the series and twenty years of the original premiere. The filming featured almost the entire original cast (Carmen Machi, Mariano Peña, Miren Ibarguren, Eduardo Casanova, Pepe Viyuela, Melani Olivares, Canco Rodríguez and León himself), with the notable exception of Ana Polvorosa (Lore), who felt that she was not at her best to reprise her role. The twist that no one expected was the one that led the film to merge elements of fiction with metanarrative to show the recording process of an episode, mixing the original characters with the actors themselves giving life to themselves. The narrative axis is Carmen Machi’s resistance to returning to the character, and all this with abundant reflections on the nature and limits of humor, which the original series exceeded on numerous occasions. Can’t you make humor out of anything anymore? ‘Back and forth he does it… and he also wonders why. In Xataka | This Prime Video series ends after 7 years and 40 chapters, making history with an audience more divided than ever

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