learned

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

There he learned everything he needed to build Microsoft’s empire

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Microsoft is, without a doubt, the greater professional success of Bill Gates. However, not many people know that the secret of their success was based on some failures that the millionaire committed Before founding the technological. In his autobiographical book, ‘Code Source: My beginnings’Gates reveals how this first business experience, when he was barely a teenager, was decisive to mold his vision about What Microsoft should be. This episode of Gates’s life shows that even the brightest and most successful businessmen have had to stumble learn from your mistakes. Traf-o-Data: Gates and Allen’s first attempt In the summer of 1972, Bill Gates was attended by his last year of high school, while Paul Allen was already in college. Both had met at the school computing club. They were inexperienced and have barely done a few programming projects for the school or to collaborate in projects with their teachers. However, they were presented with the opportunity to code and process telemetry data of the Alburquerque traffic using perforated paper ribbons, so both friends joined for efforts and founded Traf-O-Data. Gates himself is described in the book as a “spoiled know -allotodo” that often responded with sarcasm and disdain with a: “That is the most stupid thing I have heard.” A phrase that, who have worked with the tycoon At some point in his career at the head of Microsoft, he has surely heard on more than one occasion. Having that in mind, the experience provided by Traf-O-Data, although failed, served as learning For someone who has defined himself as self -taught. Both schoolmates created a machine equipped with a Intel 8008 microprocessor of 360 dollars that allowed to automate the reading of the paper tapes that contained the traffic data to digitize that information. Although the idea seemed promising, the company failed to be profitable. As Paul Allen remembered In an article De Newsweek, “Traf-O-Data was a good idea with a poor business model. We had not occurred to market studies and we did not know how difficult it would be to get financing from the municipalities.” In 1975, they managed to bill almost $ 17,000. Which was not bad in the case of an inexperienced young people. According to Paul Allen, he remained operational until 1980, when he already registered annual losses of $ 3,494. This first business failure, far from discouraging them, served as a test laboratory where They learned important lessons on the marketproject management and the importance of constant innovation. “Traf-o-Data is still my favorite mistake because it confirmed that each failure contains the seed of the next success,” Allen recalled. Gates assured in his book that he learned that it is not enough to have a good idea, but it is crucial to have a solid business model and a well -defined business objective. The experience with Traf-O-Data taught them to identify the real market needs (the digitalization of the data of the paper tapes) and to develop solutions that really made the difference (the machine that processed the information), skills that would forge the foundations on which Microsoft would be built. Learning to be the boss The adventure of Traf-O-Data, was also a personal level learning for Gates, somewhat awkward in terms of social skills. Before developing the machine with the processor, Gates and Allen They hired a group of students of lakeside younger than them to transcribe by hand the data of the tapes. They paid fifty cents for each tape. Then, Gates and Allen went to the Library of the University of Washington and used The university computer to process this data and generate the traffic patterns graphics that the tapes had been recorded. That He taught them to work as a teamto make quick decisions and adapt to the changes in the environment to stay in your target. Later, they created their own processing system, which allowed them to collect two dollars daily for the digitalization of the data, as well as expand their business area to other government agencies of the neighboring states to Seattle. Gates himself explained to young peoplethat they were going to graduate at the University of Arizona del Norte that errors are a fundamental part of the learning process and that you should not be afraid to commit them. Traf-o-data was the seed of What is Microsoft today. In Xataka | Bill Gates is clear about the habit of his childhood that has helped him succeed in his career: get bored In Xataka | Steve Ballmer has become a Milmillonario without founding a single company: some of his advice to achieve it Image | Flickr (World Economic Forum)

How I learned to use several email addresses to keep all my protected digital accounts

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A few years ago, when I dedicated myself to repair home computers, it occurred to me to print some professional visit cards so that my clients could easily contact me. In addition to including my phone number, which only allowed to send text messages because WhatsApp was barely taking its first steps, I added my email. I still remember leaving the printing press with a handful of cards in my hands, excited to start distributing them. But as soon as I cross the door, I realized that I had made a mistake: I used my main email. Until that time, it had remained relatively “secret”, but that changed at the moment it was printed on my cards. And it was the same email that I used as an access door to my digital life. I had just exposed it without realizing it. A concern invaded me instantly, accompanied by several questions about the associated risks. What if someone tried access my accounts without permission? Could I use the mail that was on my cards along with the information about me on Facebook to try to guess my security response? And what would happen to the services I had linked? The risk was minimal, I should not expose my main email. My immediate reaction was to create an exclusive secondary account for other services, while the direction printed on the card was only for professional contact. If your security was compromised, the impact would be limited. My accounts on electronic commerce platforms, social networks and other services would continue to have a recovery account other than the main one. Having a single email address for everything was a mistake To better understand why this caution is important, let’s put us for a moment in the mind of a cybercrime. If as an attacker he can access the main mail of a victim, I can easily explore his entrance tray to discover what other services he uses. For example, when you find Amazon emails or social networks, you could request restore passwords directly. If the victim also made the frequent mistake of reusing the same password – and somehow I have achieved it – I would not even have to strive a lot: it would be enough to try that key to accessing multiple platforms, generating a serious domino effect. The aforementioned solution was only temporary. It served me for a while, but we live in such a dynamic world that forces us to evolve, not only to take better advantage of technology, but also to guarantee our safety and privacy. Over the years, keep a contact email and another “secret” ceased to be enough. I discovered that my contact email was not so public or the “secret” so private. Although the latter was not on my card, I trusted any online service that asked me to register. And, as we know, companies, no matter how big they are, do not always protect the data of their users. There have been notorious cases of leaks, Like Yahoo’s 2016 o The Quora of 2018. Although I had never shared it directly with other people, the amount of spam and fraudulent emails that I received made me suspect that my email address had been filtered on the Dark Web, That dark internet area where personal information circulates as a currency. After all, my email was probably part of some database sold to the highest bidder. Of course, among the undessed emails there were also classic scams Like the Nigerian Prince. LinkedIn, at that time, publicly showed the email address of the users who enabled that option in the privacy settings. In addition, there were those who collected this data for mass shipments, which explained the amount of newsletters and unre requested messages that came to be connected to certain people. I soon understood that I needed more than my own emails, because, like many, I had had others assigned by third parties, such as the University or those of work, which are usually deactivated by disconnecting from the institution. I decided to take the necessary measures to improve this aspect of my digital life, which meant Create other mail accounts. Thus were structured: Contact email: Public address so that anyone can write to me. Private mail for services: Exclusive for login and recovery of accounts. Work mail: For everything related to my professional activity. Mail for Newsletters: To receive and manage subscriptions without saturating other accounts. Mail focused on privacy: Proton mail account with end -to -end encryption and tracker lock. In all I tried to apply the maximum security measures: two steps verification, Passkeysrecovery keys, robust passwords, etc. In addition, I incorporated the use of a password manager to avoid the risk of reusing credentials and to generate unique and safe keys for each service. I opted for a reputed manager who allows me to store them safely without depending on memory or physical annotations that can be violated. I also started using “Log in with Apple”With my private email for services, which allows me to hide my real address through random emails (@privateatelay.com). To this I added the Temporary ICloud+ Correos (@icloud.com), Ideal for records on platforms that do not inspire me confidence or whose data protection policy raises doubts. To reinforce security, I implemented multiple recovery methods. Thus, if a method does not work, I always have another access road. This is essential because any recovery method can give problems. If I lose my mobile phone and it is my only access road to my account, I would be in a serious inconvenience. However, having both a telephone number and an associated email, I can recover access without depending on a single factor. The same goes for alternative verification codes: if I do not have immediate access to my phone, I can use one of those previously stored codes to log in safely. Having multiple access recovery methods is not a luxury, but a necessity. In a world where everything … Read more

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