important

the most important differences in the new generation of Samsung

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Samsung has presented the new generation of its folding mobile phones through the new Unpacked, with new versions of the two already well-known models and a third brother that aims to be the competition for the folding iPhone. However, we are going to go point by point reviewing the differences between the two most traditional modelswhich are the most different. Technical data sheet of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Dimensions and weight Folding: 75.4 x 85.7 x 13.1mm Displayed: 75.4 x 166.9 x 6.1mm 180 grams Folding: 81.9 x 123.9 x 9.7mm Displayed: 161.4 x 123.9 x 4.5mm 201 grams folding screen 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X FullHD+ resolution (1,080 x 2,520 pixels) 400 pixels per inch 3,000 nits Refresh rate: 1-120Hz Vision Booster 7.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X QXGA+ resolution (2,448 x 1,848 pixels) 403 pixels per inch Refresh rate: 1-120Hz Vision Booster secondary / main screen 4.1-inch Super AMOLED Refresh rate: 60/120 Hz Resolution 948 x 1,048 pixels 5.5-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X QXGA+ resolution (1,248 x 1,972 pixels) 428 pixels per inch Refresh rate: 1-120Hz Vision Booster Up to 3,000 nits Low reflectance screen processor Exynos 2600 Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy Ram memory and storage 12/256GB 12/512GB 12/256GB 12/512GB 16GB/1TB main camera 50 MP wide angle, dual pixel AF, OIS, f/1.8, FOV 85º 12 MP wide angle, f/2.2, 123º FOV 50 MP wide angle, dual pixel AF, OIS, f/1.8, FOV 85º 50 MP wide angle, dual pixel AF, f/1.9, FOV 120º front camera 10 MP, f/2.2, FOV 85º Main screen: 10 MP, f/2.2, FOV 85º Folding screen: 10 MP, f/2.2, FOV 100º battery Dual 4,300 mAh (typical) 25W fast charging 15W wireless charging PowerShare Reverse Wireless Charging Dual 4,800 mAh (typical) 45W fast charging 20W wireless charging PowerShare Reverse Wireless Charging price From 1,299 euros From 1,999 euros At first glance you can take a look at the most notable differences between the two new phones. However, we are going to delve into the most differential characteristics. Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8, 256GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, 256GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links What type of user are you? Two completely different formats He Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 They differ in many ways, but above all they do it in their formats. The first follows the line of previous generations, betting on a format with a horizontal fold and a clamshell design, while the second has a book format with a vertical fold. This… what does it mean? The Z Flip8 is more oriented for those people looking for a small mobilesince when folded horizontally it takes up very little space (85.7 mm high). The second is more oriented to multimedia content consumptionsince through the vertical fold we can use a much larger screen (7.6 inches) to watch videos, but above all to use certain applications such as social networks, some of which are very well optimized for this format. Processors: following the line of the Galaxy S26 We also found a big difference between the processors, something somewhat logical considering that the two phones will be launched with very different prices. In any case, the Z Flip8 is committed to Exynos 2600the same one we found in the Samsung Galaxy S26 and S26+. Instead, Samsung has decided to follow the same line as with the launch of its high-end mobile phones, betting on a Z Fold8 that incorporates the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 from Qualcomm, the same processor that we can find in the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. The battery and its fast charging At the moment it is too early to talk about autonomy, but what we do know is what batteries each of the new Samsung phones has. For the Z Flip8 we have a 4,300 mAh dual batterythe same one we saw in the previous generation with the Z Flip7. In the case of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, the brand has opted for a 4,800 mAh dual batterygiving in this case a small leap in terms of capacity with respect to the previous generation. We are talking about a difference of 400 mAh: it is not very large, but it is especially appreciated when using the folding screen, which is the largest and the one that consumes the most battery. Now, if we talk about the fast wired chargingthe Galaxy Z Flip8 maintains 25W, a very small figure for the range (and era) in which we find ourselves. On the other hand, the Galaxy Z Fold8 increases the charging power, raising it to 45W, a figure more in line with what we see both from Samsung and other brands. What prices do the new mobile phones have? Both the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 are two high-end phones. However, as we have seen so many times in previous generations, mobile phones have very different prices. He Galaxy Z Flip8 will go on sale for a price from 1,299 euroswhile the Galaxy Z Fold8 will be priced from 1,999 euros. However, even though these are the official prices, stores are beginning to launch introductory offers. At Samsung, for example, the Delivery and Release campaign is available while MediaMarkt offers a discount when registering (and logging in) in the store. Why buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip8 is a mobile phone that is clear about its audience, offering features that we do not see in other models of the brand. Its key points are: The format: Its folded size makes it a very compact mobile phone that is ideal for those people looking for a smartphone that takes up very little space in their bag or pocket. The use: The Galaxy Z Flip8 is aimed at general and non-specific use, whether for making calls, consuming multimedia content or … Read more

ASML sells the most important machines in the chip industry. Now everything indicates that they will be more expensive

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ASML, the only company in the world capable of manufacturing lithography equipment extreme ultraviolet (EUV) needed to produce the most advanced chips, is preparing for a rise in costs in its machinery. And the first to stand up has been, precisely, its most important client: TSMC. And according to has revealed The Information, the Taiwanese manufacturer is beginning to resist negotiations. Why is it important. ASML is the bottleneck of the entire semiconductor industry. Without their machines, neither Nvidia, nor Apple, nor TSMC, nor Samsung would be able to manufacture the chips that fuel the artificial intelligence boom. That it decides to raise prices, something The Information says it has rarely done in its history, is a sign of the extent to which demand for AI has given the company bargaining power it didn’t have before. In detail. ASML’s plans affect its two large families of machines. On the one hand, according to has confirmed The company’s own financial director, Roger Dassen, during the presentation of second quarter results, there is a way to increase the price of low numerical aperture (Low-NA) EUV systems, its most in-demand technology. On the other hand, ASML has already told several customers, including Chinese manufacturers, that their DUV (deep ultraviolet, somewhat less advanced but still essential) equipment will cost 10% more, according to share the middle. Some Chinese clients have already agreed to pay that extra cost; TSMC, on the other hand, has not wanted to jump through hoops for the moment. Each new generation of ASML machines processes more wafers per hour and improves etching precision, which means more and higher quality chips for its customers. It is what the company itself calls “value-based pricing”, since the logic that follows is that if its equipment generates more economic benefit for the factories that use it, ASML wants to keep a part of that additional benefit, as Dassen explained in the conference with analysts. Between the lines. TSMC’s anger has its explanation. And the Taiwanese manufacturer has been defending for years that You do not need to jump to the very expensive High-NA equipment (which exceed 350 million euros per unit) and that can continue to squeeze out its cheaper Low-NA machines through design improvements and computational photolithography techniques. In fact, according to they count From Tom’s Hardware, its entire manufacturing roadmap until 2030 is based on that premise. If ASML makes precisely those Low-NA machines more expensive as their performance improves, the cost advantage that TSMC had built with that strategy is reduced. Additionally, TSMC needs to buy dozens of these machines for its new plants in Taiwan, the United States and Japan, so even a moderate increase can add billions of dollars to its investment. It is also worth noting that ASML has practically sold its production capacity until 2027 and a good part of 2028, with prices already agreed in those contracts. That means that, in practice, the company could only apply the new rates to orders delivered from the second half of 2028. TSMC will not notice the blow immediately, but it knows that what is negotiated now will mark the price of hundreds of machines in the coming years. And now what. The pulse comes at a time of historic results for ASML. And on Wednesday the company raised its sales forecast for 2026 to a range of between 43,000 and 45,000 million euros, well above what the market expected, according to collect Bloomberg. Gross margin will also improve to 56%, up from 53% previously forecast. To meet demand, ASML plans to increase its manufacturing capacity of its most important EUV machines by 30% this year, and is studying another similar increase for 2028. Cover image | ASML In Xataka | The war in Iran and the Chinese veto redraw the world map of helium for semiconductors

The most important thing that the Renaissance left us was not Michelangelo’s ‘David’ or Botticelli’s ‘Spring’: it was ice cream

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From the classic flavors to the most baroque derivatives such as “tripe flavored with oreo and kinder”. For many the king of sweets, the ice cream It has a history dating back to the Italian Renaissance. It is true that the story of “ice with things” almost starts from the beginnings of civilization. The ancient Greeks, the Persians and the Chinese already mastered the art of cooling off using crushed ice mixed with fruits, honey or juice, a precursor to what we would currently consider a sorbet, which differs from ice cream in that it does not contain buttery ingredients. Like all things that have been done since time immemorial, it is not very clear how the idea came to Italywhether from China through the Silk Road or through Sicily thanks to Arab influence. From the distant antecedents to Italy What we do know is that ice cream became popular in Europe thanks to Cosimo I de’ Medicione of the key figures of the 16th century (not to be confused with Cosimo de’ Medici simply, founder of the dynasty and popularly known as Cosimo the Elder because it was not a question of heating his helmets too much is the nickname). Cosimo I took power in 1537becoming Grand Duke and boss of Florence at the age of 17. Cosimo decided to make his own that “the best mayor, the king” and, in addition to carrying out a successful economic and military policy, he completely renewed the Florentine administration (basically concentrating all the power in his hands) and promoted the flourishing of sciences and arts in the city (we owe him, for example, the construction of the Gallery Uffizi). And Cosimo I would end up going down in history, above all, as a great patron who welcomed and financed painters, sculptors, architects, astronomers and a very long etc. One of them would be Bernardo Buontalentiinventor, architect, set designer, designer, engineer and all-rounder at the Florentine court. Apparently, some guests from the Spanish court showed up by surpriseso Cosimo commissioned Buontalenti (who designed a fortress that made you a dessert) something to surprise the Spaniards during the welcome banquet. Buontalenti had already managed to preserve the snow which they brought from the mountains in underground chambers insulated with wood and cork, so a dessert was made by mixing snow with milk, eggs, lemon, orange, bergamot and sweetening it with honey or sugar (versions differ). Of course, that was a great success and at the Florentine court there began to be cakes to try the prodigious invention. Today, the largest festival in Europe dedicated to ice cream It is celebrated every year in the city of Florence, where in addition to Buontalenti, they also honor Ruggeria chicken peddler who a few years before Buontalenti himself had won a cooking contest presenting a dessert made from snow and frozen fruit. Italy, cradle of modern civilization. Next stop, France For some reason that no one in their right mind could explain, the Spanish did not have the good sense to take the recipe home and it is in France where the next chapter in the history of ice cream takes place. Catherine de’ Medicirelative of Cosimo I (try to trace the relationship in the family treeif you can) married Henry II of Orleans in 1533, thus becoming queen of France in one of the most turbulent periods in its history. She was queen consort until the death of her husband, with whom she did not get along at all, and then queen regent when her son Francisco II was still very young, who also had very fragile health and who died shortly after due to otitis. “And doesn’t it make you ice cream?” Paul Emil Jacobs, circa 1840. Thus, Catherine became regent for her second son, Charles IX, ruling for ten years until he finally took possession of the crown. However, Catherine would also survive Charles, thus becoming an advisor to Henry III, his third son and next king of France. Maybe Catherine remind you of someone. Returning to the topic at hand, Catherine, in addition to being a political animal, was, like Cosimo I, a convinced humanist and a great patron of letters and the arts (sponsoring, for example, the construction of the Tuileries). Catherine promoted the arts in France but did not forget her Italian roots, so the influence of elements italians at the French court it was notable. Thanks to Catherine, ballet was introduced to France and she was also partly responsible for the popularization of the commedia dell’artealthough it was not the first to present it in the French country. Catherine de’ Medici is a total fan of French gastronomy. François Clouet, before 1559. In more prosaic considerations, he also decided that French cuisine was a disaster and filled the court with Italian cooks, bringing ingredients such as olive oil, artichokes, beans, anchovies, pasta and much more. Besides taught the French to use the forkry, of course, made ice cream fashionable. And he did it by nothing more and nothing less than taking Ruggeri, the chicken man turned cook, to the French court. Tremendous plot twist. From the French court to heaven During the decades and centuries that followed, the expansion of ice cream is unstoppable (how could it not be?). In 1686, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli moved from Palermo to Paris and opened the Café Procope, considered the oldest in France and where coffee and ice cream were served and names of the stature of Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Napoleon Bonaparte and even Oscar Wilde, who liked to go to France from time to time to do his things, gathered to have a cone. If you are interested, you can still go have a drink. Throughout the 17th century, numerous gastronomy books were published that included the recipe for the famous Italian ice cream, and at the end of the 19th century, Italian immigrants introduced the recipe to New York (the Americans, in turn, would … Read more

don’t make important decisions in a heat wave

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

Sony won the most important generation by humiliating Xbox with physical games. 13 years later he killed them

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Sony has just taken a stab at video games in physical format. Those discs that allowed PlayStation to build its empire with CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray on consoles like PS1, PS2 and PS3now they have a death date. Starting January 2028, there will be no more physical games for PlayStation consoles. The reactions have not been long in coming, with all industry players pointing out the impact of this decision. We will not own games because they are licenses, worry from small publishers, death to second hand and abandoning games and all because of a decision that makes industrial sense: absolute control by Sony in the distribution of games, their price and the margin they leave in their store. But since the newspaper archive is very bloody, it didn’t take long for those who, like myself yesterday, to remember a certain moment from E3 2013 to appear: the same moment in which PlayStation 4 won the competition Xbox One with three very simple decisions, but they disrupted Microsoft’s plans. Because it was at that same moment that PlayStation won the generation. And as the Xbox boss confessed some time later, they lost the worst generation that could be lost in the field of consoles. The battlefield? Physical games, the same ones that today have an expiration date. When you lose the worst generation you can lose June 2013, E3 plenary session. The great video game fair was preparing for a generational event. Both Sono and Microsoft had teased some features of the PS4 and Xbox One respectively in advance, but on June 10, the Xbox One would show off games and pricing, and on the same day but a few hours later, Sony would do the same for the PS4. What no one expected was what was about to happen. Xbox One already had controversies behind it due to the fact that the machine had been presented more as an entertainment system (with an emphasis on watching television on it) than as a console. Besides, in a gross communication failureit was also noted that the discs needed online verification every few hours for Microsoft to verify that the game was yours. This meant that if you didn’t have Internet, you might not be able to play your games, and the division’s boss himself sent out the message. “If you don’t have Internet access, we have a product for you. It’s called Xbox 360”. When you present your new machine, it is not elegant to say that if someone doesn’t want it, they have the old one because the easiest thing that can happen is that they end up looking at the competition. And the competition… tightened. After the mess with the verification of physical copies on Xbox One, Sony attacked. During his conference, starting at the hour and 57 minute mark, Jack Tretton, who was COO of Sony Computer Entertainment, spent a few minutes stating that they believed in the physical format, in sharing and reselling your games on disc and in doing whatever you wanted with them. Of course, there would be no ‘online check’ to verify the discs either. He won a lot of applause with the speech that you can see here: That moment, added to the fact that PS4 was going to cost 100 euros less than the confusing Xbox One, marked the generation, but there was more blood. On the same day of the presentation, PlayStation recorded a video in which two of its heavyweights did a complete tutorial of what the process of leaving games between PS4 users was going to be like. It is one of the most iconic moments of these fairs and one of the last moments I remember in which one company went so hard against another in this console thing: The previous generation, the PS3 and Xbox 360, ended with the two machines selling a very similar number of units, but the PS4 and Xbox One began with the Sony machine sweeping sales. Xbox retracted its policiesbut it was late and when Phil Spencer took the reins of the division and started making moves (lower the price, remove mandatory Kinect, etc.), it was… well, that’s it: late. Xbox One sold so little that Microsoft made the decision to stop providing data on consoles sold. When that happens, things go wrong because everyone likes to stick out their chests when the wind is in their favor, and a few years later, Spencer himself commented that they lost the generation they shouldn’t lose. “We lost the worst generation you could lose, the one where everyone built their digital games library” – Phil Spencer Among their arguments, one made all the sense in the world: the PS4 and Xbox One was the generation of change, of the change from physical to digital, of the change from a model of consoles that were a blank canvas to one in which people wanted to continue playing their games from past generations. And, above all, the generation in which it was more important than ever to provide continuity to that digital ecosystem. Spencer summarized with the phrase “we lost the worst generation that could be lost, the one in which everyone built their library of digital games.” As I say, it makes perfect sense because if you went from an Xbox 360 to a new console, it didn’t matter to you because there was no backward compatibility (it was added later in the case of Xbox). You had to start from scratch, and the same if you went from PS3 to PS4. Therefore, Xbox 360 users who were not happy with the new policies were able to switch to PS4 without fear of losing anything because there was nothing to lose. However, as On PS4 and Xbox One the digital ecosystem began to developusers began to buy more and more games in that format. If you had a PS4 with an account in which you had invested money in dozens of games, it was … Read more

The prompt engineering fashion is over. Now what is important is loop engineering

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In the last three years we have seen how if you wanted to be an advanced user of AI, you had to become a prompt engineer: The way you ask the AI ​​things was vital to achieving the best results. That idea is now becoming obsolete, because an even more promising technique is beginning to emerge to make the most of chatbos. From prompts to loops. The new paradigm that has become a viral trend among developers is that of the so-called “loop engineering” (“loop engineering”) that assumes something important: that the AI ​​is going to hallucinate or make mistakes. And with this method a feedback system is implemented: a subagent generates a response, another audits it and looks for errors, and then the system automatically reruns the process until the result meets the quality standards specified by the user. AI Gurus Recommend Loops. Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, explained in a recent talk how he no longer writes prompts in Claude Code, but instead writes loops. “Loops do the job. My job is to write loops.” Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, agreed and commented on X that “you should not write prompts for scheduling agents. You should design loops that create prompts for your agents.” Addy Osmani, head of Google Cloud, exactly stated same idea: “loop engineering is replacing you as the person who creates the prompts for the agent. You design the system that does that instead of you.” Implacable cycle. This type of approach is what has managed to succeed in AI agents such as Claude Code or OpenClaw. The model can run code in a safe environment, test it, read error messages if they exist, and then fix those failures to get back to the beginning. AI already “reasoned”, but now it is capable of self-assessment and self-correction autonomously and independently. Steinberger put a clear example how to design one of these loops. Goodbye to the chat window. The technique is being very popular among developers, but at the same time it poses a potential disappearance of the traditional chatbot in the browser window. The value was previously in chat with AI and experiment with promptsbut now the idea is to propose automated workflows. The user only sees the initial problem and the final solution, there are no constant questions and doubts unless the user wants to refine after that final solution. Be careful with costs. The problem with this idea is that by designing a loop one can launch several subagents that work in parallel. This implies an expenditure of tokens that can be considerable, which threatens to be very expensive. The recommendation, of course, is to use subagents and loops when it makes sense. Another stage in the evolution of AI. The passing of the prompts to loops poses a new phase in the evolution of AI. ChatGPT amazed us by creating quick poems, but the process was inefficient because talking is not always the optimal route to achieve the desired result. The profession of ‘prompt engineer’ could therefore be threatened after that initial phase in which knowing how to talk to the AI ​​was the important thing. Now the powerful thing is knowing how to design those loops that end up doing everything for the user. Image | Compagnons In Xataka | Claude Code is being the big favorite among programmers. So much so that he already signs 4% of everything that is uploaded to GitHub

It is not enough to work hard, it is more important to get along with the boss

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There is a widespread belief that if you try hard at workIf you arrive early and leave later, job success comes on its own. Is a nice idea. But, several psychological studies have shown that it is absolutely false. According to the conclusion of psychologists, what really determines whether an employee is promoted, if he is evaluated well or if he simply survives staff cuts In a company it is not only what it produces. It has a lot to do with the relationship you have with your boss and other employees. And that depends, to a large extent, on your social skills and the relationship that exists between them. The bias that no one recognizes, but everyone practices. Since the 1970s, researchers have been studying something they call LMX or Leader-Member Exchange (Leader-Member Exchange Theory). The idea behind this theory is simple: bosses do not treat all their employees the same. With some of them they build a relationship of trust, support and access to opportunities, while with others they maintain a colder and more distant bond. According to a study By Josephine Campbell, that difference has direct consequences for performance reviews, promotions, and career development. The most striking thing about the different studies that have been carried out is that the quality of this relationship predicts work success more accurately than one would expect. Research on the persistence of the LMX phenomenon carried out at the University of Portland, show a clear link between supervisors’ ratings of the possibility of promotion, salary progression and professional satisfaction. The employees most valued by their bosses are usually the ones who get along best with them, even if they are not the ones who put in the most hours at the end of the day. Seeing your boss’s face matters more than it seems. According to published data by Euronewsemployees who work 100% remotely have 31% fewer promotion options and 38% fewer bonuses than their in-person counterparts. All this based on the same performance as his office colleagues. A 2019 study from the University of California, collected in Organization ScienceI had already observed it previously: the fact that your boss see you face to face generates positive results for the employee, regardless of their work performance. This has a name. Is called proximity bias or proximity bias and is an unconscious behavior of the human being, in which prioritize people more or events happening around you. Bosses tend to favor those who are closest to them, not necessarily those who perform the most. It is estimated that 96% of managers admitswhich perceives more contributions from those who are physically in the office than from those who work remotely. Communicating counts a lot. There is one more factor that also decisively influences how bosses and supervisors perceive some of their employees: whether you say what you think. a study carried out by researchers from the universities of Waikato (New Zealand) and Bergamo (Italy) published in Personnel Review analyzed the behavior of 218 employees and supervisors in a Japanese company. Employees who expressed opinions out loud got better ratings from their bosses. Their superiors saw them as more capable. More involved. The voice, in itself, and its reputation was built. However, the study itself recognizes that this factor cannot be extrapolated to all companies. “It is important to carefully consider the degree of politics in the workplace before expressing one’s opinion,” the study’s authors note. In business environments with a lot of internal politics and hierarchies, where power dynamics are complex, speaking up can be counterproductive. Working more hours does not move the marker. a report from the employment platform Deel Using data from more than a million employment contracts around the world, it showed that remote workers work almost twice as much overtime as their in-person colleagues, but they are still less likely to receive promotions. The extra effort, if it is not visible, does not translate into recognition and, therefore, does not materialize in promotions or opportunities for professional growth. This connects with something that psychology has been telling us for decades: The boss’s perception of you is not built only on your results. It has a lot to do with you saying good morning every morning at the office. The merit exists, but it goes faster if, in addition to doing it, you tell your supervisors about it. In Xataka | Productivity has doubled in recent years. Stanford believes it’s not AI: it’s teleworking Image | Unsplash (Vitaly Gariev)

Threads already boasts 500 million users. The missing figure remains the most important

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Threads was born at the time when competing with X seemed more possible than ever. The old Twitter was going through a period of profound changes under Elon Musk and Meta decided to enter with its own app in a field that X had dominated for years: brief, immediate public conversation supported by text. What was not clear was whether that window could become sustained use, community and real scale. Almost three years after its launch, the company already has an answer to teach the market. The data comes from the Goal itself, which has announced that Threads It has reached 500 million monthly active users in June 2026. The application would have added about 100 million monthly users since August of last year, when it was already around 400 million. It is a huge figure for such a young network and enough to place it in a very different conversation than in its first months. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg has presented the milestone along with several new features, with special emphasis on reinforcing the role of communities within Threads. In its official announcement, Meta maintains that these groups, organized around conversations on topics such as books, basketball, parenting or musichave helped shape the application. That’s why Communities It is now out of beta and adds functions such as a center to find communities, own icons, progress indicators for topics that are close to becoming a community and more recognition for outstanding users. The figures we have and the figures we are missing Part of the explanation is that Threads didn’t have to convince the user to start from a blank page. It’s no secret that upon its initial launch it benefited from a highly optimized growth strategy: the app was able to build on the connections that millions of people already had on Instagram, and some viral Threads posts even appeared on Instagram and Facebook. This advantage helps to understand why its adoption was so rapid, although it does not solve the underlying question: how many of those users have turned Threads into a commonly used app. This pace places Threads in a striking position if we compare it with other large networks, although with an important caution: not all of them were born in the same conditions nor did they communicate their metrics in the same way. TikTok/Douyin reached 500 million monthly active users in July 2018a little less than two years later of the launch of Douyin in China. Instagram reached that barrier in June 2016some five years and eight months after its premiere. Facebook announced 500 million active users in July 2010a little more than six years after its birth, although that communication did not formulate the metric with the same detail as MAU. Threads did it just before turning three years old. There is the missing figure. Meta has given the global number, but has not published the breakdown by country: we do not know what Threads’ main market is, where the growth is concentrated or how many monthly active users it has in Spain. That gap matters because a social network is not only measured by its aggregate size, but by the weight it achieves in each local conversation. And in Spain, without a public figure that allows it to be measured, Threads does not yet seem to occupy a place comparable to that of X, Instagram or TikTok. Some clues help to read this incomplete map, although none replace the official breakdown that we do not have. In its announcement, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg mentions that local communities will start with native language labels in Japan, Korea and Taiwana clue as to where you are putting the focus. Meta claims to be seeing more traction in Asia, especially in South Korea and Japan, where usage time has increased by 80% and 130%, respectively, compared to the previous year. This is useful data, but it is not equivalent to knowing how many monthly active users there are in each country. Images | Goal In Xataka | “Deepfake” calls have become a top-level security problem: Google believes it has the answer

“It is very important to mentally label tasks”

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The first day of vacation arrives, the laptop is closed and work-related cell phone notifications are silenced. But the head is still going a mile an hour without being able to take focus off of workmentally reviewing emails that have not been sent and feeling a need to find out what is happening at work. All this leads to an inability to relax on vacation, and the explanation for this is not a lack of will, but a neurological block. Because? Science has a name for what’s happening to you: information overload syndrome. And what happens in your brain before you go on vacation is the result of a neural system that has been pushed to its limits by the “infoxication“. To understand why we cannot turn off the brain at will, we must look at our metabolic energy consumption, since as detailed in a exhaustive literature review published, attention is a limited cognitive function that requires a constant flow of energy in the brain. What happens. When we are exposed to a volume of information that exceeds our processing capacity, our brain enters a phase of overactivation. Under conditions of moderate overload, the prefrontal cortex, which is the area responsible for complex decision-making and planning, becomes hyperactive to try to manage the chaos. However, if digital multitasking and the deluge of data continue, a phenomenon known as ‘neural overload’ occurs. The result. The prefrontal cortex is deactivated as a protective mechanism, and what causes constant digital multitasking causes an accumulation of glutamate in this frontal region, which physically translates into that heavy “cognitive fatigue” that we drag to the beach. But the impact does not stop at simple fatigue. Neurobiological studies have documented that this overexposure alters dopamine pathways in a way similar to that of addictive substances, reducing gray matter in areas of impulsive control and disconnecting regions of the Default Neural Network, which is precisely the brain network that allows us to daydream, wander and, ultimately, rest. The digital epidemic. Although we are now talking about social networks and artificial intelligence, the problem has been brewing for decades. Already in 1996, psychologist David Lewis proposed the term “information fatigue syndrome” in a study for Reuters, and shortly after, in 1999the specialist Alfons Cornellá coined the term infoxication to describe the information contamination to which we were beginning to be subjected. Today the different sources paint a much harsher picture, since in 2024 a study demonstrated that information overload directly leads to fatigue, culminating in emotional stress and anxiety. Added to this is a 2025 meta-analysis that warns of how current digital environments saturate our working memory, diminishing our understanding and leading us to burnout. before vacation It is when this whole neurological cocktail that we have been building explodes. Here the expert Elena Gallardo, neuroscientist, he pointed out in statements to EFE which defines this state as “mental noise.” And the fact is that, before a period of rest, the brain perceives that it must leave everything tied up and closed, which generates a peak of cognitive demand in a system that is already saturated by the year’s chronic infoxication. You have to stop. If the origin is biological and behavioral, the solution must be too. To avoid carrying “mental noise” in our suitcase, neuroscience experts propose applying what they call cognitive ergonomics, which is nothing more than strategies designed to optimize and protect our mental effort. Among the tips that this expert offers is the possibility of labeling and verbalizing tasks to prevent pending tasks from “floating” in our brain. In this way we free up the prefrontal cortex so that, when it comes to vacation, it is not so exhausted and can better process the entire avalanche of data. Images | Image from freepik In Xataka | How many vacations do I have by law: this is how the days of rest are calculated

China has just ranked second in intelligent computing capacity. The important figure is not the most striking

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There’s a simple way to hype up artificial intelligence: just talk about models. And there is a more useful way to understand it: look at which countries have the capacity to train them, run them and bring them to millions of users without the system breaking along the way. In that second race, much less showy but much more revealing, China has just presented its numbers. The figure draws attention due to the ranking, yes, but the important thing is what it tells about the foundations of its deployment. The figure. The information comes from Digital China Development Report 2025the document with which the National Data Administration summarizes China’s digital development over the past year. There it is maintained that the country reached 1.59 million PFLOPS in FP16 of intelligent computing capacity and that this volume would place it in second place in the world. There is small print. The aforementioned report places China in second place in the world within a specific category: intelligent computing capacity. That is not the same as saying that the country is second in the entire AI race, where models, chips, talent, investment, adoption, regulation and many other variables come into play. What we are looking at is something more limited: the computing capacity prepared to power large-scale artificial intelligence loads. Unity matters. FP16 stands for 16-bit floating point, a way of representing numbers with less precision than FP32 or FP64. It is widely used in artificial intelligence because it allows you to perform more operations and use less memory, a useful balance when we talk about training or running models. PFLOPS, for their part, serve to express how many floating point operations an infrastructure can perform every second. It’s not just power. The report does not stop at 1.59 million PFLOPS FP16. It adds a very specific physical layer: more than 13.73 million standard racks in operation, 42 large intelligent computing clusters, described in the document as “ten thousand card” clusters, and a national testing and verification platform that already supervises 1,129 facilities. This network, according to the document, allows 110,000 PFLOPS to be coordinated for economic, scientific and government uses. The distance with the US. China is placed second and the reference for first place is the United States. That is the reading that appears in Chinese state sources when they talk about a position “only behind the United States”, and also what external analyzes of high-end AI computing draw. The American advantage is not explained only by having more chips: also by data centers, large technology companies capable of financing enormous-scale infrastructures and a highly developed network. The other half of the data is in the use. According to the report, China had 748 registered generative AI services at the end of 2025, of which 446 had been registered during that year. It also talks about 602 million users of generative AI, with a year-on-year growth of 141.7%. These are official figures and should be treated as such, but they help to understand why computing capacity matters: we are not dealing with an infrastructure designed only for laboratories, but for services that are already deployed on a large scale. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | Unitree is doing with robots what DJI did with drones: becoming inevitable

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