learned

They learned cinema on YouTube, they have raised 300 million with their films and they have achieved something: defeating Star Wars

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Three horror movies. Budgets ranging from a ridiculous million dollars for one to ten million for another. Directors of 26, 34 and 20 years old trained on YouTube, not in schools for children of. So far in 2026, those three films have grossed more than $300 million in the North American market. Franchise cinema is not dead, of course, and we are going to prove it this year with the premiere of ‘Doomsday‘ (although, for once, surprises are no longer ruled out). But there are issues that seem to be changing in another sense. The ‘Backrooms’ explosion. Last weekend,’Backrooms‘ (directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons) collection 81.4 million dollars in North America and 118 million worldwide in its first weekend (and it does not arrive in countries like Spain until the end of June), with a budget of only ten million. It is the biggest premiere in the history of A24surpassing the previous record held by ‘Civil War‘by Alex Garland. Parsons also becomes the youngest director to top the US domestic box office, taking that record from Josh Trank, who was 27 years old when ‘Chronicle’ topped the charts in 2012. Unstoppable obsession. At the same time, ‘Obsession’ (by Curry Barker, 26 years old) added 26.4 million in its third weekend, 54% more than the previous week, starting from a budget of one million dollars. Its domestic total already exceeds 104 million. Meanwhile, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu‘, with a budget of 165 million, fell 69% compared to its opening week and was third on the list of box office receipts that week. We will see ‘Obsession’ this weekend in Spain. The precedent. January had already given the first sign. ‘Iron Lung’ (written, directed, starring and self-distributed by Mark Fischbach, Markiplier on YouTube, 34 years old), debuted with 17.8 million domestic dollars and reached 52 million at the global box office from a budget of three. Fischbach didn’t even go through a study: he self-financed and distributed the film himselfpocketing half of the world gross. Young audience. It is obvious where these collections come from: 86% of the opening audience for ‘Backrooms’ was under 35 years old, and 44% under 21. ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, not to get away from Disney’s setback with a financially similar debut the previous week, had a share of those under 25 years of age of 27%, although on paper, it should have attracted more viewers of that age (which corroborates that at this point ‘Star Wars’ is entirely a franchise for kids over forty.) These directors who came from YouTube did not summon a new audience, but rather the one they already brought from the internet. Warner Bros. Motion Pictures co-head Michael De Luca summed it up in a conference in which said that these directors “They are in dialogue with their audience from the first moment.” By the time movies like these hit theaters, he added, “they’ve already had a billion screenings.” Three directors, a common pattern. In 2022, Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute short film to YouTube titled ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’shot from his bedroom with the help of the 3D graphics software Blender. Over the next few years, episodes of the series They accumulated more than 197 million views. Curry Barker, on the other hand, came from the sketch comedy channel ‘That’s a Bad Idea’ which currently has over 700 million cumulative views across platforms. In 2024 he filmed ‘Milk & Serial’, a found footage horror with $800 budget, almost all of it spent on the camera. He spent a year trying to get mainstream distribution without success. He uploaded it for free to YouTube and accumulated 1.6 million views. Mark Fischbach, for his part, has been on YouTube since 2012. He had experimented with the film format in two of his own productions for YouTube (‘A Heist with Markiplier’ and ‘In Space with Markiplier’) before adapting ‘Iron Lung’, David Szymanski’s indie horror video game published in 2022. Why the terror. American terror has exceeded 800 million dollars worldwide so far this year, and these three films directed by YouTube creators account for a third of that figure. But… why this devotion to the genre, which goes hand in hand with the good state of health that enjoy in recent years? Horror operates well with low budgets, and the young audience that grew up with creepypasta and found footages on YouTube has a particular relationship with that aesthetic space. Testing ground. The video clips of the nineties were the laboratory where authors such as David Fincher or Michel Gondry developed their visual grammar before jumping into cinema. Now, YouTube serves as a testing ground for the new generation of filmmakers. That’s why studios and agents now scour YouTube for new names. Now what. Barker has already filmed his next film, a horror comedy titled ‘Anything but Ghosts’, and A24 has hired him for a remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. Parsons wants to expand the ‘Backrooms’ universe, possibly in television format. Fischbach, for his part, has already made it clear that he would like to collaborate with a large studio on future projects, without giving up creative control. It is possibly the one with the most traditional discovery profile in the underground and jump to the big leagues. For now, ‘Backrooms’ could end its box office career between $140 and $160 million in the United States alone, which would make the film one of the biggest hits of the year. Not bad for an idea that started as just another meme on 4chan. In Xataka | Cinema can only survive by competing in the “experience” market. That’s why Madrid already has its 70 mm projector

This soprano learned ventriloquism in confinement. He ended up performing in Las Vegas without using dolls

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When ventriloquist Señor Wences became one of the most famous Spaniards on American television with his appearances on the legendary ‘Ed Sullivan Show’, ventriloquism was an art form typical of a variety show. The most unexpected heir to her talent is Celia Muñoz, who not only continues the tradition of talking dolls, but is connecting ventriloquism with opera thanks to her experience as a lyric soprano. And it’s taking Las Vegas by storm. Wences, the teacher. The Spanish ventriloquism tradition is unusually powerful for a country our size. We have the very media-savvy José Luis Moreno (nephew of Mr. Wences himself) and the legendary Mari Carmen and her dolls, yes, but also legends today unjustly half-forgotten like Paco Sanz or Herta Frankel and her dog Marilyn. None achieved as much international significance as Mr. Wences. This man from Salamanca emigrated in 1934 to South America and from there to New York, where his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, on Broadway and on the music circuit music hall They made him one of the best-known Spaniards to Americans. His technique was minimalist to the point of absurdity: his character Johnny was his clenched fist with lipstick and a blonde wig; and his Peter was a stuffed head in a box. Wences died in New York in 1999, aged 103. For decades, no other Spanish ventriloquist had managed to penetrate the American circuit with that reach. Until today. A soprano with a foreign voice. Celia Muñoz had no relationship with ventriloquism until 2020. Trained as a lyrical singer at the Madrid Conservatory and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, she had worked on international operatic projects in Finland, Berlin, Avignon or New York. There, watching ‘America’s Got Talent’ discovered two ventriloquists spectacular: Darci Lynnewinner in 2017, and Terry Fatorwinner in 2007. He became interested in the discipline and, dedicating himself to the subject almost obsessively, he received training from Gary Owen, Darci Lynne’s own coach. To succeed. The result of this accelerated learning could be seen in 2021. In the semifinals of ‘Got Talent Spain’, Muñoz sang opera with her mouth closed in a ventriloquism number without a dummy that won the Unanimous Golden Pass from the jury, and in the grand final she won, becoming the first ventriloquist to win the format in Spain. Muñoz herself planted her victory in that historical lineage, mentioning historical figures such as Paco Sanz and Señor Wences. The international leap. In season 17 of America’s Got Talent, in 2022, Muñoz finished in third place, was beaten by Sofia Vergara and reached the final, where she performed one of her most famous numbers, combining magic and ventriloquism to recreate the spirit of soprano Maria Callas, earning a unanimous ovation from the jury. Thus he made it clear what his indisputable strong point was: the absence of dolls. On ‘AGT Superstars Live’, the permanent show at the Luxor in Las Vegas that brings together the show’s best performances, she was introduced as “the ventriloquist without dummies, making everything around her talk.” Its most notable technical peculiarity is, in addition to projecting different voices onto everyday objects such as a telephone, a radio or a glass of water, doing so while performing actions that seem incompatible with speech, such as eating, drinking or brushing one’s teeth. To Las Vegas. In December 2022, Muñoz joined the cast America’s Got Talent Presents Superstars Live at the Luxor Theater in Las Vegas, where the greats of American variety entertainment have performed for decades. For a year he headlined the show, performing five nights a week. The similarity with Señor Wences’ trajectory is notable, although Muñoz has done it much faster thanks to the immediate popularity of the Internet: in just three years and starting from scratch in the profession: the virality of a semifinal in a talent show can generate more audiences than years on the road. Next up: symphonic ventriloquism. If the American stage consolidated his career, one of the latest projects he has developed points to something more ambitious in artistic terms. Symphonic Ventriloquism with Celia Muñoz It is a show “where classical music and visual comedy meet the art of ventriloquism”, according to the description of the Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom it premiered last November 2025. Here the orchestra becomes a narrative thread for a story in which different characters and voices emerge, all articulated by Muñoz without opening his mouth. It is not very clear what the future of ventriloquism is, especially with artists like Celia Muñoz opening paths like this. What is clear is that the wooden doll is definitely no longer essential. In Xataka | For years, I have followed a daily practice to improve my memory, attention and public speaking: doing magic

George RR Martin never had full creative control over ‘Game of Thrones’. Other authors have learned their lesson

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“This is no longer my story” is probably the worst phrase a writer can say, and it is supposed that came not long ago from the mouth of George R.R. Martinmore or less coinciding with the avalanche of audiovisual adaptations of its ‘Game of Thrones’ universe. There is the eternal question of whether the author himself is the best director or showrunner in the screen adaptation of his work, and it will depend a lot on what “author” and what “work”. What is clear is that the shining stars of the publishing market do not want to make the “Martin mistake”: seeing how your world is transformed by others without control or your own voice. Feeling that the story you saw being born no longer belongs to you must be one of the worst experiences for a creator. And given the continuous boom in news of adaptations that have been working deadline at a frenetic pace, names like Brandon Sanderson or Sarah J. Maas are clear that they are not interested in following the path of the eternal debtor of ‘Winds of Winter’. The Martin case As long as you are interested in content, interviews and news about the adaptations of ‘Game of Thrones’, it is easy to come across statements by George RR Martin about his discontentand even something more painful, assuming distance with its own adaptations. At the beginning of the ‘Game of Thrones’ project, his involvement was greater and his role was much more decisive. Although the showrunners main ones were always Benioff and Weissand creative control fell to them, Martin participated as executive producer, occasional screenwriter and advisor. However, starting in season five his role was diluted, and with it his closeness to the direction of the series. Benioff and Weiss, despite having some clues about the outcome, it is true that they had a difficult task to say the least: finish a story that not even its creator had already finished at that time. It is not surprising that given the path that the controversial closureMartin got off the wagon and acknowledged in numerous interviews that his ending was not going to have anything to do with that of the series. Arrive when you arrive. It came out so-so. With this experience, let’s call it bittersweet, one would expect Martin to be more cautious with future adaptations… But not. In ‘The House of the Dragon’ he appears again as co-creator and executive producer and, once again, at first everything seemed to flow normally in the first season. At least until again different points of view with the showrunner of the series, Ryan Condal, once again create creative tensions. The friction already exists, to the point that HBO asked Martin to take a step back from the project. Months later the author would return to production. “George and Ryan had a disagreement about the direction season three should take. At that point, it became clear that the process and communication with them had broken down and we needed to start from scratch. So, naturally, there was a period where we all took a step back for a while until we could find a new way to move forward.” HBO insider And now we have ‘The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’again with George RR Martin as producer and with active involvement. Everything seems to be going well with this new adaptation, but the first season has just finished and experience teaches us that problems begin to appear after the second, so we still don’t know what direction it may take. Others will not make concessions Even so, one cannot put all the responsibility on him or treat this fact as an isolated case. Without focusing on other disciplines where rights and authorship are also a minefield, in the publishing world the relationship between authors and adaptation rights is always they have been complicated. Just look what happened to Tolkien’s work; a real legal tangle with rights fragmented for decades, limitations of creative control of Tolkien and heirs, while different companies managed books, merchandising or characters. What ultimately resonates is that even having the rights doesn’t guarantee real creative control either. The impact that certain decisions or a controversial ending can generate directly affect your work, fandomto your reputation and, why not say it, also to your ego. Therefore, the emphasis that a few months ago is not so crazy Taylor Swift having recovered the rights to all his music; We’re not just talking about the albums, but about the visuals, creative direction, music videos… and in literature it’s a bit the same, it’s fighting to have control over everything that your creation entails. It’s normal that Sanderson doesn’t want to get his fingers caught. When an author signs with a studio to adapt their work, a sale of rights occurs to transfer the production of the series or film, temporarily or permanently. Here comes an important point: these rights can be exploitative (including books, possible spin-offs, merchandisingvideo games) or they can be separate rights where the production company or studio does not have full ownership. Now, taking into account the stumbles of other writers with this type of agreement, the essential thing for this new generation, even if the transfer of rights occurs, is to negotiate creative control clauses. This is where Sanderson He led the way a few months ago. After years of trying that did not bear fruit, the author of Cosmere is now taking advantage of his editorial power and his legion of followers to take the reins of the adaptation of his work on Apple TV. He will be the architect of the universe; He will be in charge of writing, producing, advising and will also have decision-making power. That is a level of involvement that not even JK Rowling or Martin enjoy. “I flew to Hollywood and pitched my projects to all the major streaming platforms and studios. Basically, everyone tried to bid on ‘Mistborn’ and ‘The Stormlight’. In the end, … Read more

How we learned to take care of what lives on a screen

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Thirty years after its launch in Japan, the Tamagotchi is still recognizable at first glance. The egg shape, the three buttons, the screen that barely shows a few animated pixels. Everything seems taken straight from the nineties and yet, we are not facing an object frozen in time. Bandai has continued to push new versions and the product continues to find an audience, both among those who remember it from their childhood and among new generations who did not experience its original heyday. This journey, from global phenomenon to persistent cultural icon, cannot be explained only as a fashion that returns. The Tamagotchi installed a different relationship with a device: in its original version it was not used when you felt like it, but when you wanted it. Caring, feeding, cleaning and assuming consequences were part of the deal, with a radical element for an electronic toy of the time: there was no pause button to rescue you from neglect. What we interpret today as the “attention economy” did not yet have a name, but the mechanics were already there. A Japanese toy that taught how to coexist with digital Functionally, the Tamagotchi is a basic simulation of care and growth encapsulated in a pocket-sized object. The device executes a set of rules that determine the state of the digital creature, rules that the user can only partially modulate through specific actions repeated over time. There is no learning curve complex nor a clearly defined ending, and therein lies part of its uniqueness compared to other electronic toys of its time. The important thing is not to “win”, but to sustain the bond. The interest is not in dominating the system, but in living with him. That logic, deliberately open, allowed the Tamagotchi to transcend the usual framework of the electronic toy and integrate into the daily routine of those who used it. It was not about sitting down to play, but rather assuming a presence that could demand intervention throughout the day, regardless of the context. It’s a small distinction on paper, but huge in practice, because it moves the game from a “time” to an ongoing relationship. To understand why this product toIt seems in Japan in 1996it is convenient to look at the industrial context without turning it into a closed cultural explanation. Bandai operated in a mature market for toys and licenses, and in the mid-nineties it was looking for formats capable of connecting with a young audience that already lived with electronics. Japan, furthermore, was an environment especially accustomed to portable personal objects, from players to consoles, and to characters turned into everyday icons. All of that didn’t “cause” the Tamagotchi, but it did make it more readable. The key is that the Tamagotchi did not rely on a well-known franchise or a previous history. Its appeal was based on a simple, portable and easy-to-communicate idea, reinforced by an aesthetic close to the Japanese visual culture of the time, where the small and the expressive were already part of the landscape. That combination helped the concept be adopted quickly and, above all, shared naturally. Not as a rare device, but as a personal item that was carried around. Although the Tamagotchi is often spoken of as a singular invention, its origin is the result of a very specific collaboration. Akihiro Yokoipresident of WiZ, proposed the initial concept of a portable virtual pet and presented it to Bandai in the mid-nineties. There, Aki Maita, responsible for the project within the company, was the one who transformed that idea into a viable product from a technical and commercial point of view. This double authorship matters because it avoids the easy story of the solitary genius and better describes how many consumer phenomena are born. The initial concept was that of a portable virtual pet. The process included testing with real users before its launch, something unusual in the development of electronic toys at the time. These tests allowed us to adjust both the design and the focus of the product and revealed a key fact for Bandai: interest was strongly emerging among teenagers, especially girls, which influenced the final aesthetic and the way it was presented. It is not a minor detail, because it explains why the Tamagotchi became a social and visible object, not a device that was hidden. If we talk about the name, we can say that it was not a minor detail or an afterthought either. “Tamagotchi” born from a combination deliberate between tamago, the Japanese word for “egg”and watchreferring to an often consulted object, adapted phonetically in Japan. That choice reveals how the product was thought about from the beginning. Not as a toy that is used occasionally, but as something that is carried around and looked at frequently. As we say, in the original model, the device did not offer full control to the user. There was no way to freeze the system or protect the creature from the consequences of carelessness, and that harshness was built into the proposal. The asymmetry, in which the user responded more than he commanded, altered the traditional relationship between player and toy and increased the emotional cost of abandonment. Bandai assumed from the beginning that this lack of indulgence was part of the experience. The Tamagotchi was not designed to please, but to demand consistency and generate involvement. This logic, which today we associate with much more sophisticated digital dynamics, was key to making the bond with the creature feel less instrumental and closer to an everyday responsibility. When the Tamagotchi left Japan, it did so as difficult-to-anticipate phenomena often do: faster than the market could absorb. In May 1997 it arrived in the United States and, from there, spread to other markets, including European countries, in a very short period. Bandai went from managing a domestic launch to dealing with a global product, with supply problems, resale and a constant presence in media that did not always know how to fit that … Read more

In the middle of the ocean, 250 passengers on a plane learned that one of them was a stowaway. One shaped like a rat

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There are few things that can surprise you when you fly at 10,000 meters high in the middle of the ocean. The problem (the big problem) is that when something surprises you in that context, it is not usually a pleasant surprise. And much less if what surprises you is a rat. Can you imagine the feeling? We assume that something similar is what the 250 passengers They were flying from Amsterdam to Aruba, a small island in the Caribbean. The return trip, which passed through the nearby island of Bonaire, had to be suspended by the company itself, forcing passengers to wait one more night until the return plane was ready. A rat at 10,000 meters high By the time the plane wanted to arrive in Aruba, each and every one of the passengers on the KLM plane that was making the journey had already found out what was happening. Among his dreams of paradisiacal beaches and days of relaxation, the image of a rat had slipped in. Specifically, the rat shown by the videos recorded by the passengers themselvesmoving between the curtains that separate the seating categories or the overhead compartments, as can be seen in the images of the Dutch media Of Telegraaf. Click on the image to go to the Instagram post Evidently, the Dutch media has echoed the matter. According to RTL“the passengers remained calm and the crew did not lose sight of the animal at any time.” In Dutch News They point out that it took KLM 36 hours to hunt the animal after it was first seen. And that was the main problem why the return flight was cancelled. Once the rat was caught, the company had to leave more than 250 passengers on the ground in order to carry out a thorough cleaning and disinfect the entire interior of the plane. Asked if passengers traveling on board can request some type of compensation, experts pointed out Telegraaf which was complicated since it was an exceptional situation and they would have to prove that the airline was the real culprit for the entry of the rat. They explain that they could request a compensation economic if the study of the facts shows that the rat sneaked onto the plane into the compartments in which the catering is transported, but they affirm that it is complicated that this could have happened like this. Photo | Florian van Duyn and Nikolett Emmert In Xataka | In 2019, Iberia lost a dog before flying. Now the European Justice says that it is worth the same as a suitcase

McDonald’s has not learned from Coca-Cola and has presented a Christmas advertisement made with AI. The reactions have been even worse

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Everything indicates that the negative reaction to use of AI in Coca-Cola Christmas ad It has set a precedent… but it has not discouraged large corporations. MacDonald’s has made its own greeting with synthetic images and the reaction has been so overwhelmingly negative that the company has decided to remove the spot from social networks. Once again, issues such as creativity, aesthetics, profitability over ethics and, above all, what majority reactions they are generating are put on the table. What has happened? McDonald’s Netherlands has withdrawn its Christmas campaign generated entirely with artificial intelligence after facing a avalanche of criticism on social networks (and after being forced to disconnect comments on their profiles). The advertisement, ironically titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year”, is a perversion of the classic Christmas carols, and showed disasters with a festive atmosphere: traffic jams in which Santa Claus is involved, rebellious fir trees, unpalatable family members… the whole pack of suffering of these dates, to remind us that at least we have McDonald’s left. The problem. As happened with Coca-Cola, the problem is twofold. Aesthetically, the result is spooky.: Disturbing physics, expressionless faces, slapstick humor taken to the extreme because of that strange elastic and surreal violence of the AI. But above all, it makes viewers and critics wonder about the ethical legitimacy of this type of operationswhich completely dispense with human capital to produce more and faster. We are facing the first steps of an experimentone that corporations will put into full gear as soon as public rejection eases. Who has done it. The burger brand had entrusted production to the Californian duo MAMA (Mark Potoka and Matt Starr Spice), together with the AI ​​division The Gardening.club of the studio The Sweetshop. In a post that has since been deleted, the directors defended their work: The announcement required “seven intense weeks” of work, investing in it “more hours than in traditional production. Their central argument: “AI didn’t do it. We did it.” The controversy with Coca-Cola. The McDonald’s disaster represents the year’s second major Christmas controversy involving AI-generated advertising. A month ago Coca-Cola ignited a similar debate by launching its remake of the iconic 1995 ‘Holidays Are Coming’ spot, this time produced using generative artificial intelligence and starring animals… after the poor reception that a spot with the same concept but starring people had in 2024. The Atlanta multinational hired three specialized studios (Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card), but the reaction from the public and critics was devastating. A reflection on that rejection, in reference to the 2024 ad with non-existent humans: Tim Halloran, who worked for a decade in Coca-Cola’s brand management division, stated that the campaign constituted “a violation of the brand promise” of Coca-Cola since, “for years, the core of that brand has been the idea of ​​authenticity.” Toys R Us too. Ahead of Coca-Cola’s first spot, in June 2024, Toys R Us debuted “the first commercial ad created with Sora,” OpenAI’s text-to-video tool. The one-minute spot narrated the origins of the company through its founder Charles Lazarus, combining images of the boy who would end up creating the store with the mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in completely synthetic sequences. The industry reaction was almost unanimouswith people like Joe Russo stating in X that the ad It was “shit”. The impact on brand perception was measured Marketing-Interactivedocumenting negative reactions from 53.4% ​​of the spot’s viewers. The problem of authenticity. Behind the rejection of these ads there is a deeper problem than mere poor technical execution. In December 2024, NielsenIQ published research that revealed how viewers cognitively processed AI-generated advertising, and the result was not very promising: consumers consistently rated these contents as “annoying,” “boring,” and “confusing,” even when the technical quality was high. Neeraj Arora, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained why the rejection is particularly acute in the Christmas context, with special attention to the Coca-Cola spot: “The holidays are a time of connection, of community, of coming together with family, and that’s a big part of what the holidays are about. But when you introduce AI into the mix, it doesn’t fit: it doesn’t fit with the festive moment, but also, to a certain degree, it doesn’t fit with Coca-Cola and what the brand stands for.” Christmas, traditionally a space of emotional authenticity, collides head-on with the synthetic nature of AI. Controversial results. The cases of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola illustrate a contradictory reality: the speed of production and cost savings that AI promises do not necessarily compensate for the loss of emotional connection with audiences. The consumers are developing rapidly the ability to identify synthetic content, and their immediate reaction is rejection. In Xataka | The secret formula of Coca-Cola is in a safe in a town in Valencia. The same one who claims his authorship

The domestic robot with which many dream is already real. F.02 Figure has just learned to load a dishwasher

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We have been imagining a future with robots that help us at home. From robotine of ‘The supersonic‘even Andrew from’The Bicentennial Man‘, Fantasy has always been there, but it had never seemed so real. The advances in recent years have taken us to a point where automatons begin to touch the field of everyday life. Figure AI, one of the most ambitious companies in humanoid robotics, has taken a step that brings that future. Your model Figure 02known as F.02, has shown that it can Fold clothes, reorganize packages and load a dishwasher: simple tasks for us, but greatly complex for a robot. A jump that redefines the potential of humanoids With 1.68 meters high and 70 kilos, F.02 is a fully electric robot with an autonomy of about five hours per load. You can walk 1.2 meters per second and transport objects of up to 20 kilos, which places it near the physical range of an average adult. What makes this robot special is that F.02 does not depend on human operators to execute their functions. Unlike Optimus, The Tesla robot we saw in the event ‘We, Robot’ with several assisted capabilitiesthis model works totally autonomously thanks to an artificial intelligence system called Vision Language Action (VLA), designed to interpret instructions and act on your own. The second key point is its ability to learn new skills from training data. F.02 could already fold clothes and move packages, but has incorporated the task of loading a dishwasher No need to redesign your hardware nor to create a new AI model. The company indicates that this task, which seems trivial, hides huge challenges: separating disorder of messy batteries, reorienting them and manipulating them with centimeter precision, coordinating both arms and handling fragile or slippery objects. Each dishwasher is different, each load is a puzzle, and the system must adapt in real time to unexpected errors or collisions. The most interesting thing is that everything has been achieved with the same robot and the same digital brain, only adding data. This draws a future in which domestic robots can receive updates for Expand their abilities without replacing them. They could even learn from their own experience at home, closer to a realistic vision of autonomous and useful robots on a day -to -day basis. Images | Figure ai In Xataka | Anthropic is worth 183,000 million even though he invoices 5,000 million a year. Or it is the business of the century, or it is the madness of the century

An earthquake has shaken the coast of Almeria. And Middle Andalusia has learned thanks to Google

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An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 located in Almeria waters has shaken multiple locations Andalusians in Almería, Granada, Jaén and areas of the Spanish Levante such as Murcia. Along with it, thousands of Android mobile users have received an unknown notification to date: a directly related to the detection of farms. The earthquake. According to information from National Geographic Instituteat 7:13 a.m. on July 14, there has been an earthquake of magnitude 5.4 to two kilometers deep in the corporal of sticks, having special incidence in populations of the Andalusian coast. The consequent replicas have lasted until 8:49, with intensities of 3.4 and 2.7. Local media They report that at the moment there have been no consequences of gravity, ensuring the 112 that “no damage to the region has been notified by the earthquake.” The message. Virtually immediately, Android phones have issued an automatic notification to thousands of phones through Google Play services. This alert is framed within the Google seismic detection system, Shakealert. In it, the estimated magnitude of the earthquake is noticed as well as recommended practices to keep us safe in earthquake cases. Through a map, both the time and distance from the earthquake are shown, with the possibility of consulting the latest updates through the same section. How it works. Google’s Seísos alert System It is more than curious. In the United States (California, Washington and Oregon) uses a network of 1675 seismic sensors to detect tremors and earthquakes. Outside these territories, the seismographs are our own phones through the accelerometer. If a phone detects movement changes that can be interpreted as an earthquake, send a signal to the Google server. At that time, the server combines this signal with that of other phones to try to find out if an earthquake is taking place. In case of determining what is taking place, an alert is sent on two levels. The key to using this system is that it works predictively. In fact, Google warns that these notifications can reach even before the earthquake occurs. The alerts. The network of more than 2,000 million Android devices, according to Google, acts as a minisismographers front capable of giving precise data on the earthquake. In the event that the alert is of 4.5 or higher scale (in MMI scale, no Richter, here is measured in surface perceived, not energy released from the epicenter), a strong sound alarm is sent ignoring the modes not to disturb and lighting the screen. If the alert is of lower magnitude, such as the one lived today, only an informative notification is sent. What about Es-alert. The doubts that have assaulted upon receiving the alarm have to do with the alternative system we have in Spain: Es-alert. Here we have a system with three levels of alert and civil protection as in charge of sending the notification through Cell Broadcast (radio emission without having active mobile data). System Who detects Who sends the alert How the alert is sent You need Internet connection Android Earthquake Alerts System Android phones themselves, through their sensors Google Push notifications Yeah es-alert National Geographic Institute (IGN) Civil defense Radio emission (Cell Broadcast) No In this case, Es-Alert has not worked. The system is active, working, and detecting cases Like fire in Tarragonabut it is Civil Protection who determines the supposed severity of the phenomenon and whether or not notification is to be sent. The legal framework. A Law 17/2015, of July 9, of the National Civil Protection System determines that only the competent authorities can issue official alerts: Civil Protection, Aemet, IGN or the communities and municipalities themselves. Private companies cannot issue official alerts … but they can send private notifications that do not violate any law. That Android informs you about a possible earthquake It does not differ too much than the time app I inform you that it is raining in your area. Google notices do not supply these official notification systems, act as an informative complement to the official framework. Here the debate enters into the own responsibility of a private company to alert the population of a gravity event as an “unofficial” earthquake. One that clashes with the slowness (or direct inactivity according to circumstances) of national systems in specific cases like this. Image | Xataka In Xataka | The ghost of the earthquakes returns to Lisbon: how a savage earthquake in 1755 took the entire city ahead

Amancio Ortega learned how difficult it is to enter the top 10 of greatest fortunes. Has also learned how easy it is to go out

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Amancio Ortega is not having the best welcome to the summer and, for the second consecutive week, it records negative figures in the assessment of its heritage for the stagnation of the price of its main source of income: Inditex. The Spanish millionaire has lost two positions in the last fifteen days and, with it, he leaves, the least provisionally, the “top 10” of greater fortunes of the planet that Forbes updates in real time. The difficult thing is not to arrive, it is to stay At the beginning of 2024, the Millionaire Leones based in La Coruña, became part of the select 100,000 million clubas prelude to sneak between the top 10 of the greatest fortunes in the world. The founder of Inditex had to wait almost a year to finally, ascend until the tenth position in the List of greater fortunes of Forbes. Since then, Ortega has changed his position to the stock bursatiles caused by the Trump tariff war. However, the veteran investor had remained more or less stable between the eighth and ninth position thanks to the stability they provided Your real estate investments With Pontegadea, which contributed to maintaining its fortune at about 131.8 billion dollars. However, the assessment of his fortune has not stopped suffer setbacks Since Inditex presented its quarterly accounts. Although the results were positive, with a growth of 1.5%, to 8,247 million euros, the investors of the multinational textile believe that They are not good enough for its low growth. As a consequence, the firm’s actions initiated a bearish rally dragging in its fall to the fortune of its main shareholder, with 59,294% assigned to their societies put investments (50.010%) and Partler 2006 (9,284%). Inditex is still decisive for Ortega To put the fall in context In your quotethe day before the presentation of results, the price of the action closed at 49.21 euros, today the action is quoted at 43.39 euros, its lowest price since April 2025. With this data, the firm led By Marta Ortega It is left 13.73% so far this year. This progressive fall of this asset has had a direct impact on the assessment of fortune. In the last hours He has registered falls estimated at more than 2.3 billion dollars, placing its fortune at 117.6 billion dollars. After this fall in the assessment of his heritage, the Spanish millionaire is in the twelfth position behind Michael Dell, which with an estimated heritage of 121.1 billion stands in the eleventh position of the Forbes ranking. However, Ortega is fair ahead of Bill Gates, which with 116.5 billion dollars as a fortune is in the thirteenth position. The place of Amancio Ortega in the Top 10 of Millionaires of Forbes It occupies it Now Jensen Huang, co -founder and CEO of Nvidia, which amounts to the tenth place with a fortune of 134,500 after adding 5,500 million to the estimation of its heritage. In Xataka | The list of the richest people in Spain in 2025: many changes in the figures, but not in the protagonists Image | Gtres, Unspash (Praswin Prakashan)

What I learned from a Victorian bureaucrat about productivity

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There are those who seek productivity in Scandinavian design applications, there are those who track the paper notebooks and there are those who expect to find it in beep and alert -based methods. Anthony Trollope found her on a pocket watch. He was a mail official in Victorian England. Before signing, between 5:30 and 8:30 in the morning, He wrote 250 words every fifteen minutes. Without excuses. No inspiration. And so, book by book, they arrived More than forty novels. His method, which James Clear rescued in One of his guides on habits and frictionshows a paradox: that in the era of automation and asynchronous flows, what we most need is something as simple as a fixed, measurable, short and demanding interval. Indirect discipline. Trollope did not pursue Muses, replaced them with a system. The great enemy of the great projects It is not the lack of talent, but indefinite delay. Postpone, PROCASTINE. Starting to write a book seems like such a tedious task that many prefer to plan it forever. Trollope reduced the scale until he stopped being overwhelming. A quarter of an hour. Two hundred fifty words. Nothing else. Nothing less. When a novel ended, he did not rest or celebrate it: he turned the sheet and started the next in the same block. As if he understood that continuity is more powerful than motivation. And that the habit muscle is trained with rhythm, not with intensity. It must be said that Trollope did not have to suffer the tyranny of today’s notifications and distractions (Slack, mails, messaging …), but despite that advantage, he cultivated the Attentional monogamy: One thing at a time and without looking at the clock except to obey it. The stopwatch as an accomplice, not as a tyrant. An advance of deep work. Four daily blocks are more than one hundred per month. And fifteen minutes per block are nothing, until they are everything. Give to write about 30,000 monthly words when the rhythm is taken. And each block begins with a tangible victory, easy to reach. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment (which never arrives), I was adding one more page to the castle. Trollope practiced deep work without calling it that, and without turning it into a ritual. He was less monk Zen and more worker of the word. And he reminds us that The important thing is not to write much, but always write. That time is not found. And that, perhaps, the only thing that separates the amateur from the professional is the ability to divide an Everest in a succession of fifteen -minute steps. In Xataka | We do not need more productivity methods. We need to have a purpose again Outstanding image | Xataka

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